Dimensions
by Jaelijn
Summary: For ten years, Rimmer has been living the life of Ace. It hasn't been an easy ride, and still things get worse. As Simulants mess with dimensions, Rimmer's ship become badly damaged, and he unexpectedly finds himself back where he started out - in his home dimension, with Red Dwarf not far away...
1. Ace Rimmer

**A/N: **Welcome! I'm happy to finally be able to share this and I hope you will enjoy it!

A few words upfront:

This fic grew out of eight lines of dialogue that just popped into my head into a multi-chaptered story bridging the gap between series 8 and BTE. There are therefore no direct reference to series 10, but I have seen it and taken it into account - especially considering that we more or less have official confirmation that the hologram-Rimmer of BTE and series 10 is the one who left to become Ace. I'm aware that this has been done before, but I hope I will be able to offer my own original take on it and that you will enjoy it, of course. Oh, and while I take the name of Ace's ship from the novels, I am basing the story entirely on what we have seen in the series and ignoring the novelisations (particularly where they contradict each other).

Also, this story does have an actual plot, but it is also very much a character study for Rimmer. This has resulted in me slightly adapting the way Ace is represented (particularly since my first reaction to him was almost identical to Rimmer's). You will know what I mean after the first chapter, and even if you don't agree with me I hope you will enjoy the story for what it is - a tribute to plain old Arnold J. Rimmer.

**Disclaimer: **Copyright with Grant Naylor Productions. No infringement intended.

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**Dimensions**

by

Jaelijn

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_Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions._

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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**I. Ace Rimmer**

The _Wildfire_'s computer calmly matched the sound of her ventilation unit to the soft – and unnecessary – breathing of the ship's sleeping occupant, settling in for a night of relaxation. She didn't need to sleep, of course, but she still enjoyed the downtime – it was something Arnold had taught her. Not Ace – not the first Ace, anyway. Oh, she had been young then! Young and foolish, completely smitten with her first and only pilot, right amongst the ranks of the '_What a guy!_'s. She had been infatuated with him, so deeply that she never knew it wasn't love. And then Ace had died, and the first Arnold Rimmer had replaced him. Then, she had finally seen Ace for what he really was. Had finally seen all the things he had always hidden from her – the torture he had suffered as a child from his brothers, his parents. The boiling deep anger and insecurity. The ego so puffed up that he had buried it under a smeg-load of humility to turn it into self-confidence. The lack of true connections, the social awkwardness he had covered up with superficiality. The sexual attraction he abused shamelessly. She had finally seen Ace for the pompous, puffed-up git he had been.

At the same time, however, she had realised that the multiverse needed someone like Ace. Needed a hero who was too good to be true to fight evil that would have no match without him. A daredevil who would rush even into the pits of hell to save the innocent, who would stare down a Simulant and not even bat an eyelash. Because, in his own way, Ace had been a force for good saving millions of lives. She later learned that Ace only passed his legacy on because he felt sorry for his alternate selfs – because he could identify. He had thought that by leaving them this legacy, by giving them the opportunity to become Ace, he was doing them a favour. Making them better. The _Wildfire _was no longer sure if he was right, but, back then, she had supported his decision.

The first Arnold was still fairly close to the original. He had managed to become a pilot, but had still ended up bunking with a Lister who was just as mean, just as nasty to him as his brothers had ever been. Rimmer had fought back in the only way he knew when his sex-appeal would not work – with sarcasm. In a way, his relationship with Lister was far closer, far healthier than the superficial admiration-friendship Ace had shared with Spanners. That Arnold had been successful, but damaged. He still became a damn good Ace, flourishing in the new role with no Lister to drag him back down. By the time he died, he had _been _Ace. And afterwards, the _Wildfire _had begun to think that something, somewhere was lost whenever an Arnold embraced the role, whenever an Arnold disappeared and she was once again flying with Ace. She had always felt a thrill of excitement when the change occurred, the joy of freedom, of not being bogged down by the various struggles and neuroses that came with Arnold J. Rimmer, but the feeling had become ambivalent, and more and more so as time went on. Hundreds, thousands of Aces later, she had accepted it as an inevitability. All these Rimmers, laying down their lives for the greater good, some only lasting a few weeks, others flying with her for months, years – they all eventually embraced the role, enjoyed it, became someone else and, instead of healing their neuroses, left them behind, ran from them – because running away was always something a Rimmer did best. There was never any real growth. These Rimmers stepped into someone else's shoes and disappeared, shamelessly exploiting this persona. No one ever called them to their hypocrisy, because the only one who could, the only one who knew, was the _Wildfire_. And she, though she had come to love Arnold, with all the neuroses and mal-adjustments, and despise Ace as much as every Rimmer did when they first met their predecessor, knew that she could not risk challenging Ace. She could not risk him falling back into his cowardliness, his insecurity, his feeling of inadequacy – not if she wanted Ace's work to be successful, and she did. Because, in the end, it was for the greater good, and none of the Aces seemed to realise what they had lost.

The latest Ace had been different, a bit. He, though flourishing in the role of Ace, had never quite forgotten where he had come from. He, much closer to the Rimmer Ace had met on his first dimension jump, had been awestruck by the legacy thrust upon him, and though he embraced Ace as much as all before him, he always, again and again, had to prove to himself that he was worth it. He never took being Ace for granted. He never exploited his status as a hero. He never forgot who he had been, and what he had thought of Ace when he first met him. He had been a difficult Ace – prone to melancholy, and profoundly lonely, because he could not find solace in the countless women who threw himself at his feet. He was aware of the sacrifice, and the _Wildfire _had felt closer to him than to any of the other Aces before. When he was fatally wounded, she was devastated, and so she took him to the first dimension other than her own she had ever been.

Ace was once again replaced by Arnold. She had known this Rimmer was different when he had first stepped into her cockpit – maybe even as soon as his predecessor had transferred his role to him. This Rimmer was the flipside of the coin – only one single occurrence separated him from the original Ace, one single incident of his childhood had taken Ace down the path of success and smuggery, and had left this Rimmer with a self-loathing large enough to swallow a planet and a mess of neuroses that nearly short-circuited her psychology banks when she had taken over hosting his hologram from _Starbug_'s basic, personality-less computer. He bore his faults on his sleeve. True, he had tried to hide them behind a façade of sarcasm that was familiar to the _Wildfire _by now, and had pretended that he was the way he was by choice, when, in reality, all he wanted to do was change. His death, being resurrected as a hologram three million years after everyone to whose expectations he had ever wanted to live up to was dead had been a devastating blow to this Rimmer. Removing the only way of self-betterment he had ever known, the only way his parents had ever shown him – becoming an officer – had left this Rimmer reeling, and even after years and years, he had not caught his balance. And yet, his personal connection to his crewmates, though dysfunctional and askew, was deeper than anything the _Wildfire _had ever witnessed with any of the previous Aces. And that was why, when he attempted to leave without a proper goodbye, anxious to get on the way because he was, like every Rimmer, afraid, because he thought that his fear would get the better of him, she speedily reprogrammed her circuits, and instead of starting the ignition sequence, he activated the ejection seat.

Half of her RAM was worrying that he would throw it all down, then and there. Declaring that he could not even push the proper buttons, that he could not possibly become Ace, that he was just a failure and that nothing had ever gone right for him, so why should this? But Rimmer lived up to her expectations and more. He had a proper goodbye with his friends, even though they believed him to be Ace. And then, he had gotten the phrase wrong. "Stoke me a clipper; I'll be back for Christmas!" Where had that come from? It had thrown the _Wildfire _for a loop – none, none of the thousands of previous Aces had ever gotten the phrase wrong, not once, not even the first time. She had not known what to say, she had not known how to react – she hadn't even had a proper conversation with this Rimmer yet. It was only when she heard him mutter "Whatever." and he started her up with the sure hands of someone who knew precisely what he did, in a clinical way, though he'd never had the practical experience, that she relaxed. Because this Rimmer was different, and for once, she could see the potential for real growth. More, she could see the _desire_ for growth. This Rimmer did not slip into the role effortlessly. This Rimmer struggled with it, fought it, because he had met the original Ace and had been the first one, the only one to loath him, even before the _Wildfire _caught on. And it was not only because this Rimmer felt that Ace had gotten all the breaks that had been denied him. It was because Rimmer saw Ace for the pompous, overbearing, repulsive git he had been. Because he knew that _What a Guy! _Ace might be popular, might be attractive, brave, successful – everything he was not – but saw that he was not _better_. He was the flat, stereotypical hero right out of a B-movie without depth, because when he had 'buckled down', as Ace had called it, he had merely found a more efficient way of escaping. He had become someone he was not, someone he should, by all rights and purposes, not even like. Because _suffering maketh man_ and Ace was too superficial to feel real emotions.

She had planned to take Rimmer to a quiet dimension, to have a nice, long talk. She needed to fill him in on his predecessors, what they had done, whom they had met, she had to make him practice Ace, because if he wasn't convincing, he would be dead within the minute they ran into trouble, but most importantly, she had to show him that there were ways he could change, could become better, that did not involve rising up the echelons of command. She had to show him that he had been on the right track, that he just needed a chance to feel needed, to be successful, to have something he was _good _at, and that he could burn his self-loathing out in a true effort to change, without the trappings of an officer career which he was not cut out for, nor did he, in his heart of hearts, believe he deserved it.

Of course, it had all gone horribly wrong. She had navigated them right into a volatile hostage situation between two rival spacefaring GELF tribes, and Rimmer had been thrust head-on into his duty as Ace. She was just as terrified as he, fearing for his life more than she had feared for any of the Rimmers before him, because it would have been such a waste. This one was the first who had any change of becoming the best Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer there had ever been, and she would never have been able to forgive herself if she had gotten him killed before she could tell him – or, even worse, if he _became _Ace like all those before him, and stopped being Arnold all together. He screwed up the voice a bit, but otherwise managed the situation nicely – there were no blazing guns, but he got the two GELF tribes together at the same table, and in the end, the hostages were released on both sides, and the GELFs parted in peace – not a drop of blood spilled. He could have had the pick of the captain's daughters of both vessels, who were both incredibly attractive, having evolved from model-GELFs. The _Wildfire _had brazed herself for meeting them both, and had scaled up the privacy setting of Ace's small bedroom, and she had felt sick at heart. The elation she had felt when an Arnold became Ace was gone. So was the ambivalence. She was grieving for a chance lost, for destroying something so precious.

Rimmer had stepped back into the _Wildfire _to a chorus of "What a guy!" he had been alone, and as soon as the hatch had shut behind him, his placid smile had turned into a disgusted sneer and he had torn off the wig. "What a load of smegging nonsense! _What a guy!_" he'd mocked. "What's with this ridiculous costume that it turns people into puddles of goo – it's smegging disgusting! Did you see those women? It's like they don't see me at all – all they want is to jump in bed with some pompous git of a hero! Seriously, what's wrong with them? They can't be that desperate for sex with those looks."

The _Wildfire _had silently rejoiced. She knew that this was the Rimmer she had been searching for for such a long time – ironically, the first Rimmer she had ever met who was not Ace. Ace had met hundreds of his duplicates, even apart from those that had become his successors, and he had never met someone quite like this Arnold J. Rimmer. And while Ace had thought that it was a good thing, not being able to bear seeing another version of himself so broken, so pathetic, the _Wildfire_ now knew that he had been wrong all along.

True, life was anything but easy with this Rimmer. He was truly struggling with being Ace. He was terrified half of the time, and when he was successful, part of him insisted that he did not deserve it. His hatred of Ace was as much of a hindrance as it was an asset – it took him longer than anyone before him to get the mannerisms right, and even then, he could not resist infusing them with a touch of sarcasm, a speck of overacting. No one but the _Wildfire _noticed, of course, but then she was always there for him. There when he got into the dumps, when he ranted about how he had screwed up his life, about how much he hated the fuss made around Ace, when he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to rest but had to keep going, because Ace was needed. He was the first Rimmer who enjoyed being called Ace, but at the same time insisted that she called him Arnold, or Arn, or even Arnie when they were alone, because he was 'sick and tired of the pompous, arrogant, smegging tin-foil-wrapped goit'. He stood in his own way, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he had no one left to make proud but himself, and denying himself to be just that – his favourite argument being that it was not really him, but Ace, that he had just slipped into a role like a bad actor. But the _Wildfire _knew that, deep down, the acknowledgements, the successes did him good, that they began to heal his self-confidence, that his remarks became less sniding, that he laughed more often, relaxed more easily, that the anxiety headaches became less, that his priorities began to reassert themselves, that he was becoming a better man.

Like the Ace before him, he struggled with the loneliness. The _Wildfire _tried to be as efficient a companion as she could, but Rimmer was missing his friends – the crewmates he had hated and liked at the same time, the people that had accepted him back when he had nothing but loathing for himself, despite his shortcomings, though they had lied and insulted and mocked him, anything to hide how much they cared – the people he could not show how far he had come. He occasionally brought women back, but never formed any real connection, since, for them, he had to be Ace. He had tried to drop the act, once, but had changed his mind after trying to explain for five minutes and meeting only with a blank, and, frankly, disgusted look by the woman. He had thrown her out without even so much as a goodbye kiss after that and had fled back into the loneliness of space. Because, and that was the strangest thing, he needed the loneliness as much as he despised it. It gave him an opportunity to truly be himself, and to truly relax in a way he never could as Ace.

He had made it. He had proved to himself that he could be Ace. But it all meant nothing without someone who could acknowledge the enormity of that achievement. He wanted to do something as Arnold J. Rimmer and get the credit as Arnold J. Rimmer, not Ace, nor anyone. And the only achievement that he believed to be truly his own was that he had been Ace for ten years now, not that it seemed all that long when he had spent nearly 600 years on Rimmerworld, all on his own. But, considering his lifestyle and the many, many times his lightbee had been damaged, it was impressive. This Rimmer, this Ace, often survived on damned luck, and that made him more like himself than he realised.

The _Wildfire _enjoyed the quiet, the respite, but she knew it couldn't last. Just as she knew that the one Arnold J. Rimmer she had come to love like none of his predecessors could not remain with her forever.

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**A/N: **Hope you enjoyed it, and will have the time to drop me a review! :) The plot will really start of in the next chapter!


	2. The Dimensional Tear

**A/N: **So this chapter has my explanation of what happened at the end of series 8 - sound plausible to you? ;) And now, without further ado - on with the plot!

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**II. The Dimensional Tear**

None of them ever quite understood how it worked out with the nano _Red Dwarf_. When it hadn't looked like Rimmer would get back in time with the antidote, they had followed him through the dimensional gate, only to find that the device on the other side had short-circuited – Rimmer, obviously just in the middle of crossing when it had happened, had been severely injured and unconscious, but it didn't matter, because this _Red Dwarf _was perfectly organised and a lot more friendly than theirs had been lately – mostly because, one, they had spent their time in the brig or on some suicide mission, and two, because Rimmer was captain.

Rimmer – their Rimmer, nano-Rimmer – had never run into his alter ego on his mission to save his ship, and Lister had to admit that it was probably better for him – two Rimmers in one room had never boded well, ever, no matter how many times they had tried. But this dimension's Rimmer, Captain A. J. Rimmer, was very different from what Lister had expected. He could be as much of a smeghead as their Rimmer, but he was a successful smeghead – and it had done him a world of good. He was easier to get along with, less bitter, less resentful, having achieved what he had always wanted – to become an officer. And yet, when he compared him to Ace, it was jarring. Ace had been… well, Ace, but the Captain was undeniably Rimmer. He was sadistically amused by their predicament, congratulating himself for avoiding this particular disaster, and for not being like his alter ego. Nevertheless, he was happy enough to help, if only to get rid of them. The Cat – their Cat – also couldn't wait to get back – he found his alter ego 'too strange'.

To their astonishment, the dimensional portal became functional again after a while, and when they returned, they found their _Red Dwarf _perfectly intact, but deserted, a couple of plips on the long, long, long range scanner indicating the ships in which the crew had escaped. Rimmer, newly on the mend and seriously pissed off at how things had transpired, declared he could not see anything, and they returned to their original purpose – getting back to earth, somehow. They eventually figured that Kryten's nanobots must have had their hand in the mysterious restoration (They never knew that a certain dimension jumping ship had dropped by with an exhausted occupant who never realised just in which dimension he was, who had found the decaying ship and had used the _Wildfire_'s nanobots to restore it in the memory of the people he knew, even though none of them were in sight. It had been one of his bad days.).

After a while, the ships trailing them disappeared from the radar, and Kryten reckoned that they had found a planet and settled down, if only to appease his guilt chip. Still a few weeks later, Kristine Kochanski died when an airlock malfunctioned and she was blown into space too soon. They never found the body. Lister turned into a bit of a mess for a while, but there was always the Rimmer Experience to cheer him up – not that he would ever admit using it to anyone, least of all to nano-Rimmer, who was somehow the same and somehow so different from the Rimmer that had left them to become Ace. Not that the Cat and Kryten knew that – they still believed there was only one Ace, and that their Rimmer had died a tragic, unexpected death, which had stunned even the Cat into silence.

Lister had told nano-Rimmer, though – partly because he knew it annoyed him to no end to hear of his other self – a self that even he was forced to acknowledge as somehow more real than he was, despite his hologrammatic status, because nano-Rimmer had no memory of ever even attempting to fix the drive plate, or of dying. He had struggled to wrap his mind around the fact that they had been transported three million odd years into the future, and he found the changes in his bunkmate incomprehensible – not that he seemed to mind much, because somehow, they got along far better than they ever had, even with holo-Rimmer. Lister figured he had probably matured a bit, against his will – just a tiny, miniscule bit – and their prison experience had bonded them together, finding them on the same side more often than at odds, even though Lister could not resist winding Rimmer up a bit. It was what kept him sane, after all.

Still, they could share a joke, laugh with each other rather than about the other; what had always only been a shared smirk with holo-Rimmer blossoming into something more. And yet, there was no denying that this Rimmer lacked some of the growth that had occurred in holo-Rimmer. His desire to become an officer was still incredibly forceful, even though the prison sentence had dampened his hopes, and, somehow, not having had the experience of being a soft light hologram and not able to do anything caused Rimmer to whine _more _frequently than his alter ego had – at least after holo-Rimmer had stopped complaining about being dead.

Sometimes, lying in his bunk at night, Lister would wonder aloud what the other Rimmer, Ace, was doing. He always had to remind himself of the _Ace _bit. He'd known that Rimmer had been able to do it, smeg, he had wanted him to do it, giving him just the little push he had needed. And yet, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling of having pushed him to his death – real death – once he had gotten over his irrational bout of missing the smeghead. It was Rimmer, for smeg's sake – even as a hard light hologram, he was far too cowardly, too naïve to last long – wasn't he?

"Lister, you're doing it again," Rimmer, nano-Rimmer, murmured from the bottom bunk.

"Sorry. I'm jus' wonderin' if we ever run across Ace again."

"And if it is going to be _him_."

"Well, yeah."

"Frankly, after what you've told me about him, I don't want to meet him. That Ace sounds like a completely insufferable goit. I can't imagine why I would ever want to become him."

"Rimmer thought the same when he first met Ace. He still did it."

"Dying must have messed him up a lot."

"I don't know, Rimmer."

"As long as you don't expect _me_ to wear that ridiculous wig."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Rimmer. Besides, Ace probably won't come back to this dimension anyway. It's not like he would expect to find a replacement here."

"Are you quite finished now, Lister?"

"Yeah. Night, smeghead."

"Good night, Lister."

...~oOo~...

"You know, I've always wondered why people insisted that Napoleon was small even after they had figured out that someone had confused the measurements. They even got small actors to play him."

"Is this important, Arnold?"

"They decided he had to be compensating for something. I don't know." Rimmer tapped his lips with his index finger, swivelling slightly in his chair and concentrating on the game before him. "Everybody always thought something was wrong with all the great leaders. Alexander the Great, Caesar… True, some of them got a lot of people killed, but still. How come you have to be nuts to be great?"

"I remember one dimension where Napoleon was a woman," the _Wildfire_'s computer said. She was still not quite used to Arnold's aimless conversation – often on the strangest topics – but she indulged him where she could. Her database was extensive, and had been improved by hundreds of Aces who had had a hand for engineering. This one didn't, but he had surprised her and, she assumed, himself with quite good, if a bit clinical, flight skills – he had no room for improvisation, but an incredibly repertoire of all the famous flight manoeuvres of history, and the theoretical knowledge to carry them out – and a surprisingly solid understanding of his own hologrammatic status and requirements. He was also the only Rimmer who had ever, if only occasionally, reverted back to soft light, and had gone through the trouble of fixing the most essential of her systems with hologrammatic controls because a power loss probably terrified him more than a ship full of Simulants – though they both had no idea when that had happened.

He was soft light now, but then he didn't really need to touch anything to play a Risk campaign against the computer. She was grateful, because it took a lot of drain away from her energy reserves, which, though powered by solar radiation, were not unlimited. She knew he didn't enjoy not being able to touch anything, but the _Wildfire _was by now as close to a hologrammatic ship as they could get her, so it didn't matter much either way. She would never allow him to go into danger as soft light, though – the risk of damage to his lightbee and of alienating all the people he was trying to save was far too great, quite aside from the fact that he couldn't even do anything effective in this state.

Rimmer made a face. "I think I've been to that one. Not an experience I am particularly anxious to repeat."

"It's your move, Arn."

"I know! Don't rush me. This requires careful planning, you know."

They were drifting aimlessly in space, taking a much needed rest. Rimmer, this Rimmer, always took failure hard, and it would always be some time before he was entirely ready to be Ace again. The _Wildfire_ had long ago learned that it was no use pushing him. If he needed some time to be Arnold, he needed some time to be Arnold. If he didn't get it, he only got reckless, and far too much like the original Ace than was good. The last _failure_ had not even really been a failure, but more of a qualified success. Rimmer still blamed himself, and the _Wildfire _had the sinking feeling that it was getting worse. Ace got the success, but the failure was always Arnold.

He was past the 'I can't manage anything' phase by now, but still pensive and melancholy, which probably also explained why he had requested to be soft light, wearing a military style red tunic and no wig. Especially no wig.

"Lister always refused to play Risk. I suppose he found it boring."

"It is not the most thrilling game, Arnold."

Rimmer shrugged. "I suppose playing strip poker with a male cat with six nipples, an android running around naked most of the time anyway and a head of a computer was more exciting."

"You did not participate?"

"To be fair, Lister only tried it once. I think he was not quite prepared for how Cat looked under those fancy clothes. I was still a soft light hologram back then. I couldn't have participated even if they'd asked me to. Besides, I have seen Lister's body – never again."

"You could have entertained them with your impersonations." Rimmer had once re-enacted an entire Kinitawowi ceremony he had to suffer through as Ace for her – voices and all – even though the _Wildfire _had access to his memories. He had enjoyed the mockery, so she didn't feel it was necessary to remind him of that particular fact.

Now, he shook his head slowly. "No, I don't think they would have wanted spend more time with me, anyway – we were constantly at each other's throats in _Starbug_. It was a bit cramped – no offense. It's not like I have to share with Lister here."

"None taken, Arnie." The _Wildfire_ was very aware that she was a strictly one-man-vessel. Even the occasional female company presented a bit of a problem. Not that Rimmer enjoyed the meaningless sex nearly as much as he thought he would – after all, what he had always wanted was a sex life, but somehow he had imagined that it would be with a woman who really cared about him and was not only trying to repay him for something he had done, or rather, Ace had done. Besides, some of the offers he had gotten had been downright disgusting. As time wore on, it had become easier and easier to say no.

Suddenly, a red alert light flashed up on the console. Rimmer looked up from the screen, alarmed. He had never seen that light flashing before. "Susan, what is this?"

The _Wildfire_'s computer didn't remember when he had started calling her Susan, but she didn't complain. She'd never really had a name, and it felt nice.

"There's something going on in the next dimension. Hang on, I'll check it."

Rimmer nodded. The _Wildfire _didn't sound too worried, which was good. He had become quite good at reading her over the years – if there was something he needed to be concerned about, even if she tried to hide it from him, he could tell.

He still tore his glance away from their game and turned around in the pilot chair to face the window – and that was when he saw it. A gigantic swirly thing, right in the middle of space, the wrong colour entirely for a time hole, and not quite right for a dimension jump. Right in their path. He might suck at mathematics and astronavigation, but he had had enough experience to know that this was bad news. He took control of navigation, and fired up the thrusters, trying for an evasive action. "Susan, what is that thing?!"

The computer was silent for a long time, long enough for Rimmer to realise that, whatever he did, the _thing_ was homing in on him. "You should switch to hard light, Arn."

"What is it?"

"It is a dimensional tear."

"A what?"

"A tear in dimensions, tearing dimensions apart. Hang on, we are being dragged in – hard light, Ace!"

"Right!"

He had only converted halfway when the tear crashed into them, and everything went black.


	3. Saving the Multiverse

**A/N: **Onwards to chapter 3! (Rimmer, I am so, so sorry.)

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**III. Saving the Multiverse**

"Ace! Arnold! Arnie!"

Rimmer jerked awake, his personality fizzing back as his hologram reasserted itself.

"Oh, thank God," the _Wildfire_'s computer sighed in his head, projecting herself directly through his lightbee.

Rimmer pushed himself upright. He had been flung forward across the console, where a bunch of warning lights were now flashing. He couldn't exactly avoid looking out of the front window in his position, but instantly wished he hadn't. Space had disappeared and been replaced by something disconcerting, a kind of lilac whirl, fragmented and with snatches of normal space whizzing past while the _Wildfire _hovered, motionless, in its centre.

"What happened?"

"We've been dragged into the dimensional tear. It was like dimension jumping, but not quite. You didn't revert to hard light in time, Ace – the lightbee's been damaged."

Rimmer quickly patted himself down. Everything felt fine, and he was obviously fully hard light now – he also was back in Ace's costume, though the wig still lay at his side. "Am I okay?"

"Yes, it looks as though the self-repair programme can handle it."

"Are _you_ okay?"

"I've navigated us to the centre. We are safe here."

She did not answer Rimmer's question directly, and that made him nervous. Out of instinct, he switched to being Ace. "So, what's out there?"

"What you can see are the fragments of various dimensions."

"Fragments?"

"Yes."

"That doesn't sound too good."

"You remember those split seconds during dimension jumping when we seem to exist in two dimensions at once, when I built a bridge for us to jump from one dimension to the next."

"So what's this – some kind of permanent bridge?"

"It's a tear, Ace. It's not healthy. It's like a very nasty cut in the fabric of the multiverse, ripping right through the dimensions – they are clashing, bleeding into one another – it's destroying them. No rules of time and space can apply here."

"Destroying whole dimensions?"

"And everything in them."

"Then we have to stop it."

"Ace – we might be the reason for this damage."

Rimmer fell silent, staring out into the sickening swirl. "How?"

"It's followed us. I can't tell how, but it's definitely traced our steps – it was supposed to find us, but it is still expanding."

"So all the past dimensions we have visited – they are all out there? Torn to smithereens?" Rimmer found his voice cracking – it was too much to comprehend. All the people he had met, all the things he had done in those dimension, which, though sometimes a bit absurd, had felt just as real as the one he had come from – he could not understand how they could all be gone. And most importantly – _why?_ But there was no time for that question now. "Can we fix it? You stitch up the bridges every time we jump."

"We can't fix it, Ace. They are gone – but we might be able to stop it from expanding. It's going to be a bumpy ride, Ace. It's going to be dangerous."

"I saw it homing in on us. If we run, it will tear through even more dimensions. We have to do it." If they didn't stop it, it would eventually reach his home dimension, it would eventually reach every dimension, until there was nothing left – even just imagining that brought Rimmer to the edge of his comprehension. What would happen to him, then? Would he drift about in the nothingness of destroyed dimensions, just as he was now, for all eternity, with only the computer for company? Would he cease to exist when his home dimension was destroyed? Would the _Wildfire _cease to be? How did it feel being in a dimension that was torn apart? He didn't think it would be pleasant.

The _Wildfire _knew exactly what he was thinking. "Your dimension is still safe, Arn."

Rimmer nodded. "Thank you." He pulled on the wig, and took control of the ship. "Right. Let's do this!"

"I've traced it to Dimension B4F18F102B. That's ten jumps. Can you handle it, then I can concentrating on stitching up the tear?"

"You got it, Computer. Here we go."

...~oOo~...

Rimmer could handle five jumps, then he was violently sick in the toilet facilities in the rear of the ship, while the _Wildfire_ hummed comforting around him. Still, he could feel the strain on her systems through the hotlink to his lightbee, just as he could feel her anxiety.

"We have to keep moving, Ace. It's like stitching up a wound with dissolving thread – if we don't do it fast enough, we'll have to start all over again."

Rimmer pushed himself upright with a groan. One regular dimension jump, even two or three were no problem at all once you got used to it, but this was neither normal dimension jumping, nor were they anywhere near through it. The lack of space coordinates, even dimension coordinates, messed with his basic sense of astro-orientation, and the constant lilac swirl made him dizzy. He should not be able to be that sick, being a hologram, not even in hard light – after all, he had not really eaten any proper food in days, but he still had hacked up bile until his stomach had settled and he sat on the floor with his eyes squeezed shut against the swirling surroundings.

Still, somehow, he felt the same urgency as the _Wildfire_, and managed to drag himself back into the pilot chair. "Get her on the way, Susan. I've got this."

The final jump spat them out into normal space in Dimension 3BAA102A: a dimension ship with its power reserves nearly depleted by the lack of suns in the void of destroyed dimensions and an exhausted AI, and its occupant, beyond sick, dizzy and exhausted, on the brink of passing out from the strain on his mind and simulated hard light body. They hurtled right into the firing line of a Simulant battle cruiser.

"Smeg!" Rimmer jerked out an evasive manoeuver out of pure instinct, his vision swimming, sirens screaming in his ears. "Susan! Get us out of here! We have to jump!"

"Can't", came the weakened reply, "have to contain the tear. This dimension is already damaged – if we jump now, the next one will be sucked into the tear as well. It's your home dimension, Arn."

Rimmer felt his lightbee jerk and shudder inside him. He couldn't handle any more of this. He was _this_ close to a hologrammatic stroke, his T-count through the roof, his mind already fraying at the edges and his legs fading in and out of existence. "Smeg, smeg, smeg! I can't take much more of this!" He wrenched the ship around to avoid another missile, but power was low, and it was like trying to move a stubborn mule. The missile crazed them, and the _Wildfire_ bucked. "That hit the drivepot! Susan, can you get me fire power?"

"Enough for a single shot, but I won't have enough energy left to manoeuver!"

"Our momentum will carry us to that moon – I can get us down, you know I can! Transfer the power!"

A video communication flickered up on the screen before Rimmer just as he hit the trigger, and he caught a glimpse of the captain of the Simulant ship even as his missile struck the vessel with deathly precision – it had not been specialised for Simulants for nothing – and their attacker was torn apart. Then, power was gone, and gravity took over, hurtling them down towards the moon with sickening speed, ripping them through the atmosphere – and they were going too fast – and Rimmer's lightbee gave out with a sad plip.

...~oOo~...

He awoke to the feeling of having been offline for a while, which was actually quite nice from time to time, but this time, it came with the sickening realisation that he was standing in the wrecked cockpit of the _Wildfire_, its snout buried halfway in the rocky ground, the windscreen shattered, the consoles mangled and smoking, and he incorporeal soft light. He had fainted, and they had crashed. He should not even have survived that, but somehow, he had.

"Susan?"

For a long time, there was no reply, and Rimmer scrambled into the cockpit frantically, trying to locate the mainframe – but he was useless as an engineer. Eventually, after much desperate searching, the computer's weak presence niggled at the back of his mind, somewhere in the sensory input from his lightbee – which, miraculously, had survived the crash without damage, even his T-count was back to normal.

"Arnold."

"There you are. Don't worry me like that, you know I can't stand it."

"I'm sorry, Arnie. There is not much power."

"The generators have been damaged?"

"They are still working, but I can't store the energy properly. Had to use up most of it to boost the repair programme of your lightbee."

Rimmer placed a hand on his midsection, where he knew the lightbee was hovering. "But…"

"Your T-count was through the roof, Arnie – it was eating away at your programme. I had to."

"So, what now? I can't fix you as long as I am soft light."

"Arnie-"

Rimmer knew what she was going to say, but he didn't want to hear it. The _Wildfire _was dying, because she had saved him. "We'll just wait until there's more power, then I can boot up the hard-light drive."

...~oOo~...

He ended up sitting on the _Wildfire_'s snout, back to hard light, looking out over the rocky landscape, conversing with Susan through the psychic link in his lightbee rather than through the voice unit to save a bit of energy, at least. "Can you tell where we are?"

"It's Io, Arn."

"Io? You mean-"

"It's Io. That's all I can tell right now."

"Okay." Rimmer frowned. He'd thought the terrain had looked familiar, somehow. "Do you have a recording of that message we got just before I blew the Simulants up? I thought I recognised that face – weren't they experimenting with dimension jump technology?"

"It was them, Arn."

"But that was years ago – all the dimensions between then and-"

"Only those in a straight line. Ten. This one is falling apart, as well – the experiment has backfired."

"We've done it though? Stopped the tear?"

"Yes."

Rimmer swallowed around a lump in his throat. "Can you tell how many-"

"You don't want to know, Arnie."

"Tell me."

"Ten trillion, Arn."

"Smeg."

They fell silent for a while.

Finally, the _Wildfire _nudged him gently. "It's not your fault."

"Why? Why would anyone want to tear whole dimensions apart?"

She had to tell him the truth. "They've been doing it to find you, Arnie. To get back to you. Well, Ace. But you."

"But why? I let them go back then, didn't I? I spared them. I could have destroyed them, but I didn't. Wasn't that the right thing to do?"

"I'm sorry, Arnie. I can't help you with this. I have not been programmed for moral dilemmas, my circuits can't take it." The _Wildfire_ felt Rimmer's desperation, his insecurity, his doubts, his fear. He knew he was losing her, and she loved him too much to not make a final effort, for his sake. "Would you have acted differently if you had known?"

"If I had known that they would kill trillions of lifeforms to get back to me?"

"Yes. Would you have destroyed them, vulnerable, defenceless as they were?"

Rimmer swallowed. "… I don't know." Years ago, he would have said _yes_ without hesitation. But that was when he hadn't even thought about being Ace.

"Arn, your lightbee! It can't take it. I… can't…" The computer's voice drowned out like a damaged record, and Rimmer was left alone in the darkness, a crushing weight on his chest, and stared out over Io's desolate landscape, unseeing.

...~oOo~...

The _Wildfire _couldn't recharge enough to restore the voice link, her power units were decaying quickly. The damage done by the dimensional tear, her effort to keep him sane and safe, had pushed her beyond repair. At least, by morning, he could communicate, even though it hardly felt like talking to Susan. He ended up imagining her soft, gentle voice as he read the answers the computer supplied in terse language, occasionally even in binary, even though it only added to the ache he felt in every fibre of his hologrammatic body.

This dimension was lacking after the others – in this dimension, he was still an eleven year old boy running around the moon somewhere. Probably hiding from his brothers. But this dimension was also crippled by a devastating war, brought on by Simulants who were as far advanced as the ones he had met three million years into the future. Rimmer knew that, as Ace, he would have no problem finding a job here, as a fighter pilot in the space corps perhaps. The dimension didn't have long, anyway. It was only a matter of time before the aftereffects of the tear would have decayed it completely, melting it with the next-best dimension and destroying all life within.

This was not how he had imagined spending the rest of his existence, but he could not stay by the _Wildfire_'s wreck. Once the solar generators gave out, his lightbee would be running on battery, and unless he found an alternative energy source, and quickly, that would be the end of him. He owed her to at least try, after all, she had torn herself to pieces to get him to the ground undamaged.

Rimmer almost bent over double as pain wrecked him at the thought – he remembered her last words clearly – _Your lightbee! It can't take it! _– and he knew that she had meant the guilt, the moral conflict that ran again and again through his head without hope of solution, but he couldn't help it – it was who he was. One of his greatest fears was _physical_ torture, because he had already been torturing himself _mentally_ forever. He had no self-loathing beast left anymore – maybe – but there was no way he could stop blaming himself for what had happened, and no way he could have acted differently without being anyone other than the man he had become. Not only Ace, and not merely Arnold Judas Rimmer, but something in between. His own kind of Ace.

...~oOo~...

He left by midday, and by early evening, he reached the habited areas of the moon, with barely any energy left in the lightbee. The solar generators had shut out much sooner than he had expected.

He saw the Simulants in the shadows before the boy looking out over the cliffs at the edge of the village did – but he was too far away to cry out, and he didn't have any weapons. The boy turned around when he heard the guns click behind him, and froze to the spot in shock, dizziness from not eating because he had not been able to remember anything on astronavigation during breakfast forgotten.

Rimmer broke into a sprint, rushing towards the gun instead of away from it for once, and hit the boy running, pushing him out of the way – "Run! Get out of here!" He did what he was told, because running away was what he did best, but Rimmer never really saw that. The blast of the energy gun hit him squarely in the chest, catapulting him straight over the edge of the cliff. He scrambled for a handhold, anything, even as he tried to cope with the pain while his lightbee buzzed to repair the damage – he finally caught a branch, only just closing his fingers around it. He was dangling about half way up – or down – the cliff, but there was no way he could climb down – or up. This Io had been partially terraformed to accommodate humans, but some areas where still raw, sporting cliffs and rocks that were as smooth as a baby's bottom.

The Simulants did not even bother to check whether he was truly dead – and why would they. They had lost what they had thought would be easy prey, and had found someone else, thanks to Rimmer – and it had been Rimmer, because he was not wearing the wig, not wearing the tin-foil. His lightbee, with its limited psychic abilities, had sensed his grief, and had wanted him to be comfortable. Well, he had saved the boy's life, and had paid the prize.

He hung by his arms, ignoring their trembling as they strained to hold him, his mind blank while his lightbee jittered with the effort and lack of power. He did not realise the enormity of what he had done – acting completely unselfish as himself – and there was no _Wildfire _to call it to his attention.

"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast," Rimmer murmured, sarcastically, reflecting that they probably were better last words than 'Gazpacho Soup', though he still didn't have time for even a heroic couplet.

He stared at his hands as he felt the last of the power draining away, plenty of time to appreciate the irony that being a hologram would be what got him killed in the end. Then, without a sound, though he imagined there should be one, his lightbee gave out and reverted him to soft light. His hands slipped through the branch as though it had never been there, and he fell, not even feeling the wind as the air rushed past him, or he through the air. He only felt the ground when his lightbee impacted, then nothing.

No one believed Arnold Judas Rimmer, aged 11, when he had told his – well, the people that would occasionally listen to him that an enemy Simulant had threatened his life and he had been saved by someone who looked exactly like the imaginary hero he always wanted to be when he was grown up and a fighter pilot in the space corps. Or maybe even an officer.


	4. Finding Io

**A/N: **New chapter! In which I expand a bit on the idea that Rimmer has a certain talent for impersonation and the theory that Rimmer was projected completely by Holly in the early years after the accident before he acquired a lightbee...

* * *

**IV. Finding Io**

Lister was not a big fan of charades, but it was about the only game he could interest Cat, Holly and even Rimmer in, though Kryten refused to see the point. The droid, however, ambled away quite cheerfully to do some ironing and keep an eye on the drive room while Holly was occupied.

Holly's repertoire was a bit limited, though his moon imitation never got old, and the Cat, frankly, sucked, but Rimmer proved to be surprisingly versatile, though he was hopeless at guessing. Somehow, they ended up enjoying themselves anyway, and somehow, after the Cat had fallen asleep and Holly had buggered off somewhere, the game had turned into _Guess Which Crewmember Rimmer Is Imitating_. It was surprisingly easy – Rimmer did a damn fine impression of Captain Hollister when he wasn't trying for mockery, and when he was, Lister even found it hilarious – both to his surprise and Rimmer's. After laughing until his eyes started to water at Rimmer's imitation of the ship's psychiatrist, their conversation took on a lazy, companionable air.

"You know, I don't think I have ever enjoyed myself this much in my entire life, Lister."

"Ah, come on, you don't mean that. You had fun on your deathday, didn't you, and that time we had a farewell party for Kryten-"

Rimmer shot him a pointed look.

To his credit, Lister caught on immediately. "Oh, smeg, I'm sorry. That was the other-"

"The other Rimmer, yes, I gathered as much when you mentioned a _deathday_. Seriously? Who would want to celebrate their own death?"

"You did – the other you did. He always said that his death was one of the most important things that had ever 'appened to him."

"Well, I should imagine." Rimmer crossed his arms defensively. "If you had such a splendid time together, why did he leave?"

"I told ye – he had to become Ace."

"Because the multiverse can't survive without a hero who sounds like he jumped out of a bad film?"

"Well, yeah. I guess. I don't know!"

Lister was saved by Kryten bursting into the room, quite exited. "Oh, sirs, Mister Lister, sir, you have to come to the drive room immediately!"

"What's the matter, Kryties?"

"Holly has picked up an automated distress call, Mister Lister, sir – it's the _Wildfire_."

Lister immediately shot to his feet, and rushed out, trailed by a puzzled Rimmer. "The what?"

"The _Wildfire_ – that's R- Ace's ship."

Rimmer rolled his eyes skywards. "How charming."

Lister hit the drive room in a sprint. "Hol, what's going on?"

"I'm picking up a distress call on that uninhabited moon down there, Dave."

"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I'm not that far gone, am I?"

"Right, sorry, Hol, no offense. Set a course. We're goin' down in the _Bug_."

"It's automated?" Rimmer asked, completely unfazed by the excitement.

"Yeah."

"Then why bother? It could have been going on for centuries. There's probably nothing down there except for a wreck and a blackbox. He's probably miscalculated and DJ-ed right into the moon."

Lister ground his teeth. He had never been able to wrap his head around Rimmer's attitude towards other versions of himself, but this time, it felt much worse – because the version that had crashed to that moon might just be a version he had known himself. "We owe it to Ace to at least figure out what 'appened."

"That's odd."

"What is, Hol?"

"That moon. It's shaped exactly like Io."

"You what?"

"It's the right size, the right rocks, the right everything – just no trace of the dome settlements, but it's clearly been terraformed."

"But how can it be Io? That's 3 million years away."

"Beats me, Dave."

"Well, we're goin' down. You comin', Rimmer?"

"Fine."

Lister could tell, as they headed to _Starbug_, which had mysteriously reappeared as they had found the ship undamaged and whole, that Rimmer was just a bit curious, despite his words. Part of Lister really wanted to see his reaction to Rimmer – Ace – because the only difference between them was that one had died and been resurrected as a hologram, while the other had died, but remembered nothing, and had been brought back to life by nanobots. If any two versions of Rimmer had ever been more similar, it was the duplicate hologram and the original holo-Rimmer, though it had turned out that the limited power supply of the second hologram had somehow corrupted his disk, making him far more malicious than the original. That was why Lister had wiped him, and had always intended to wipe _him_ – because _he _would not have come to their bunkroom after a fight with himself, and he would not have worn that uniform to his execution. This time, there were no corrupted disks, but Lister could not shake the fear that they might find no Ace at all, or that they might find Ace, but not the one he was expecting.

The _Wildfire_ looked far worse than Lister had expected, almost as horrible as he had feared. She had crashed badly, ramming the cockpit right into the moon's surface. The once sleek snout was pressed flat like a pig's, and there was no doubt that essential systems had been damaged. The engines had practically melted away, scarred by weapon fire, and the solar generators lay bare and powerless. The only thing still working was the flight recorder, transmitting a weak automated distress call, and keeping a trace on something on a radar. Lister had a pretty good theory about what it was.

The signal was getting weaker by the minute. Ace was not in sight. It had to be him – his lightbee. Lister had sent Kryten to find it, and did what he could for the _Wildfire_ – fixed the solar generators, hooked them up directly to the mainframe. After years of repairing _Starbug_ and Kryten, he'd learned a few tricks.

Kryten came back a few hours later with a mournful, teary expression and a very badly damaged lightbee he had found at the bottom of a cliff. It looked as though it had been smashed brutally and deliberately with a rock, more like a pancake now than a bee. Nano-Rimmer, surprisingly solemn, had taken charge of it and brought it back the _Dwarf_ to consult Holly, while Lister delved into the _Wildfire_, distracting himself by working himself senseless and at least figure out what the smeg had happened.

...~oOo~...

Holly tutted and clucked over the lightbee, deeming it beyond repair, but he reckoned there might be enough of the hologrammatic data left to reboot Ace using _Red Dwarf_'s own systems – and so, he sent Rimmer down to the hologrammatic suite, where he got to work, and Rimmer stood and watched as a column of light slowly formed into a man – a mirror image of himself in a red, pseudo-military and strangely iridescent uniform, a blatant big H blazing on its forehead. Once the hologram was fully formed it staggered, folding in on itself as if in pain.

Rimmer was too shocked to do much more than stand frozen as Holly exclaimed with enormous irritation: "The smeg-! What's he done?! I can't deal with that! Transferring to lightbee!"

The hologram flickered off, and suddenly, the damaged lightbee on the table to Rimmer's right came to life, hovering into the air and away from all solid objects, staggering rather unsteadily before the hologram appeared again, _sans_ H, and immediately collapsed to his knees. He looked exactly like Rimmer when he had a bad hangover, no sleep, and Lister was playing his guitar.

"Susan?" he whispered, whimpered, weakly. Somehow, this was not how Rimmer had imagined Ace, or how he had imagined his first words – what was wrong with the classics: _Where am I? What happened?_

"Gordon Bennett, Arn, it's Holly. Even you should be able to tell that," Holly retorted, still sounding a bit pissed off. "Didn't know it was you. Dave fed me some smeg."

"Holly?" The hologram looked up, disorientated, taking everything in before his gaze, hazy, watery as it was, but strangely probing, settled on Rimmer. Then he closed his eyes, shuddering as Holly fed him a flood of information to spare them all – himself, really – the awkward and stupid questions. It was enough to help Rimmer momentarily forget the pain. His lightbee was badly damaged, but now that there was enough energy feeding it, it would repair itself, but that wouldn't cure him. Rimmer knew that his T-count would keep on shooting through the roof, because he could not escape the moral vicious circle he found himself in – one with which even a truly human mind would have struggled, and for which his lightbee simply was not built. He was a time bomb, terminally ill, and he felt like it. It was only a matter of time before it had eaten away at him for so long that he ceased to exist.

He knew it, but forced himself to his feet to face his alter ego nevertheless – alive, reconstructed by nanites. Two Rimmers from the same dimension – the _Wildfire_ would have enjoyed that. He nearly broke down again at the thought, and his alter ego finally jumped in to help – but he was soft light, now. He had to do this on his own or not at all. He dragged himself over to the bunkbed that had been installed in the holo suite in his time to accommodate him when something in the projection unit needed fixing, and flopped down on it – he had never expected to see it again.

"So it's you," nano-Rimmer said, coldly, arms folded.

Rimmer exhaled, trying to drop his voice into a lower, Ace-like register. "I suppose you were expecting Ace to be different after what Skipper has undoubtedly told you." Smeg, he'd screwed up that line. Not only had he gotten the voice wrong, but he had referred to himself in third person. He had never been able to get the voice right when he was so obviously, physically, Arnold, but the second one was unforgivable. Then again, this Rimmer had never met Ace – perhaps he didn't even notice.

"That's not what I meant," nano-Rimmer said. "It's you. The one Holly brought back to keep Lister sane after the radiation leak wiped out the crew. The one who had adventures in space with Cat, Kryten, Lister, before leaving to become Ace. You're not some parallel version of you – us. It's you."

That, Rimmer had not expected. "Lister told you?"

"Yes. He never _stops_ talking about you. I don't think the Cat and Kryten know, though."

Rimmer nodded, both relieved and terrified. Relieved that he did not need to bother about being Ace, not right now – and terrified, because the person who would judge him the hardest had always been, and would always be, himself. And yet, he was home, on _Red Dwarf_, miraculously returned to them by nanobots along with the crew – though they were gone now, leaving only the new Rimmer behind. Somehow, this was not how he had imagined coming home would be like. He was aware that his other self was staring at him, waiting for a reply, but he was just too exhausted to think of one. "Holly, you've got to help me. Lightbee's damaged – I've got to be Ace."

"Right you are, Arn. I've tried hosting you, but there's something-"

Rimmer quickly cut him off. "The lightbee's already repairing. It won't be long, Holly."

"There you are, Arn."

Nano-Rimmer gasped when Rimmer changed before his eyes, then ended up staring at the wig in disgust even as 'Ace' sank back on the bunk in relief. "How can you bear wearing that thing?!"

"It serves its purpose," Rimmer murmured, feeling incredibly tired, but slipping effortlessly into Ace now. "I need to rest – but could you let Skipper know I would like to have a chat with him, there's a good chap? I have to talk to him immediately when he gets back. Much appreciated, Arn."

Nano-Rimmer bristled visibly at 'Ace''s patronising tone, but threw a mock salute and marched out of the room nevertheless.

Rimmer might have drifted a bit, closing his eyes against the most prominent sensory input he had as a soft light hologram, allowing his lightbee to repair the considerable damage without having to expend any energy on keeping him going. He could almost see the information racing through its circuits, the binary signals pulsing like ghost lights. He had become more sensitive to his lightbee since being Ace, probably because it had to do a lot more work for him now than when he had been with Lister and Co – the boys from the _Dwarf_, the posse. He wondered idly whether they still called themselves that. After all, nothing much had changed. Rimmer lazily sorted through the information Holly had fed him. Time had certainly marched on. Lister had found a Kochanski and lost her, and for a while, the _Red Dwarf _had been populated by a full crew once more – but now everything was back to how it had been in his time, only everyone was a bit older, and their Rimmer was alive. And he was every bit as stuck up as Rimmer remembered himself being before he had died. He was probably right now wracking his brain, trying to study for the astronavigation exam. Rimmer could have told him how pointless that was. With a ship like the _Wildfire_, there was no point in remembering the Math – the computer could do that for him. No, the _Wildfire _didn't need someone to do the computing for her, she needed a sensible, responsible pilot to relieve her of the task of steering so she could concentrate on the difficult things. Susan had once told him, when he was feeling depressed, that he had been one of the very few Aces who had ever bothered to do her that favour. She had even said that he was a _good_ pilot. She had trusted him to keep her in one piece while –

Rimmer snapped his eyes open with a pained gasp. That train of thought was getting him nowhere – it only send the lightbee into a frenzy as a few circuits burned out to offer a release for the emotions they were not designed to deal with. It jittered in his centre, creating a feeling as if his stomach had been flopped upside down and the wrong way up. Rimmer swallowed down the simulated bile and resisted the urge to curl into a very un-Ace-like ball.

Instead he sat up on the bunk. "Holly?" he said in his most suave Ace-tone, trying to attract the AI's attention.

"Gordon Bennett, Arn, you could give a guy a right fright with that voice."

Ah yes, that was right – Holly had never met Ace in his male form… "You have to call me Ace, Holly."

"I'll remember that when the others are around, won't I."

"I'm sorry, Hol. I didn't mean to offend you."

"'s alright, Arn. I know you're not in top form."

"Listen, if Lister never told the others about… you know… how come they weren't surprised that Ace was a hologram?"

"Oh, he told us about the various Aces – he just never said that the previous Ace had died and you'd taken his place. We all thought you'd snuffed it."

"So where is everyone?"

"The other Arnold is in the bunkroom, ranting to my screensaver. The others are all down on the moon."

The moon – Io. Rimmer's memories rushed back with force, and he reached up to massage the bridge of his nose, trying to will them away. "How did you find me? Did you use the Holly-Hop-Drive?"

"Smeg no. That disappeared when the nanobots stole the old _Red Dwarf_."

"But you don't have dimension jumping capabilities."

"You what? Why would I need that? My systems couldn't stand it."

"But then how-"

"I picked up an automated distress call on that moon. We flew in, found the wreck, and Kryten dug your lightbee out of a gorge. The other you brought you back here."

"Let me get this straight – you didn't leave your home dimension?"

"Nah. I would have noticed."

Rimmer sagged in relief. He was in his home dimension, safe. When the previous dimension disintegrated, it must have spat out bits and pieces into its neighbours – and somehow, maybe because he had jumped dimensions so many times, he had survived it.

"Arnold? Are you all right?"

"Yes, thanks, Holly." He swallowed against the lump in his throat. "So, what's down there?"

"Nothing much really. Few bits of debris. Evidence of terraforming. Oh, and the _Wildfire_."

Rimmer's hologrammatic heart skipped a beat. "Is she-?"

"She's been badly damaged, Arn."

He'd known that already. He could deal with that. No need to probe further. "What are the others doing down there, then? Stretching their legs? Catching a whiff of rancid Io air? Shopping for rocks?"

"The Cat's asleep in _Starbug_, and Kryten is assisting Dave. Dave is trying to fix the _Wildfire_."

Rimmer was on his feet more quickly than he thought possible, and his lightbee complained with another stomach flop. "He is _what_?"

"All right, Arn, keep your hair on!"

"But it's Lister! He has no idea what he's doing! You have to stop him!"

"Hang on – they are on their way back. I have to go." Holly's face disappeared from the screen, and Rimmer sank back down onto the bunk. His lightbee had almost finished the repairs, drawing liberally on the ample reserves of the deserted _Red Dwarf_. If was fighting a losing battle against the progressing file corruption, of course, but at least the exhaustion and physical pain were gone, though he still felt as though his heart had burst into tiny, pointy shards. Still, he was fit enough to be Ace. Rimmer blew a simulated lock away from his forehead, deciding to remain soft light for now. The others already knew he was a hologram, and he could easily explain it away with the damage they had probably all seen. He could not deal with the hugs and handshakes just now.


	5. Welcome Home

**A/N: **So yes, I couldn't resist a slight reference to _Blue_. Feel free to make of the characters' reaction whatever you like. ;)

* * *

**V. Welcome Home**

Kryten was the first to barge into the holo suite. "Oh, Mr Ace! It's so good to see you! Your lightbee was so badly damaged-" Kryten bit down a metallic sob, and Rimmer wrinkled his nose in disgust – inwardly. Outwardly, Ace beamed at the mechanoid.

"Good to see you too, Kryties. 'fraid I can't shake your hand right now – soft light for the repairs, you understand."

"Of course, Mr Rimmer, sir. Oh, Mr Lister will be so happy to see you! He was terribly worried when we found the wreck. Oh, and Mr Cat says he can't interrupt his nap right now, but he would love to show you some of his new suits later – if you are up to it."

"Tell him I would be delighted."

Kryten beamed, his hands fluttering with delight. "You have met Mr Arnold?"

"Yes, I have. I would like to have a word with him later, as well."

"Oh my, I haven't prepared any food! I'm so sorry!"

"Don't worry, old chum. Can't eat right now – soft light. Maybe an afternoon tea?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I'll go and prepare it now, sir. Mr Lister should be down soon."

"Thank you, Kryties."

Rimmer dropped the act as soon as Kryten's back had disappeared down the corridor, tiredness nagging at the back of his mind once more. "Hol, do you have enough power to boost my hard light drive?"

"Of course, Arn. Let me just shut down the lights in the sauna. There."

Rimmer carefully stepped away from all solid objects, then spread his arms as his hard light form reasserted itself. Once he had adjusted to the sensory input of solidity, he wandered around the room, stopping briefly at the dream recorder. "Holly, can you make a copy of my memories up until the Risk game and store it in your database?"

"No problem, Arn. Are you going to tell the others?"

"That is not your problem – keep the smeg out of it."

Holly threw a pout, then buggered off. Rimmer's wandering turned into pacing. When he heard Lister's steps in the corridor, he leant back against the table, trying to look relaxed, casual.

Lister stopped in the doorway, his eyes scanning the hologram carefully. He, Lister, looked older, but had aged with a certain dignity (of course, Rimmer had also simulated aging. If he wanted to pretend to be Ace, he had to grow older like any living person). Not that Lister smelled any more pleasant, or that his shirts were cleaner, or that he had gotten rid of that smegging jacket. His hands were creased with oil, and everything in Rimmer's mind screamed _Wildfire_, but he forced out a smile, hoping it was convincing.

"Hello, Listy," he said, quietly, not bothering with Ace's voice. Lister knew, anyway.

Lister met his gaze, but pinched himself in the arm at the same time. "Ouch. Hi."

"What did you do that for?"

Lister shrugged with forced nonchalance. "Jus' makin' sure you're not goin' to jump me."

Rimmer recoiled physically with shock. "What? Have you taken leave of your smegging, curry-dulled senses? Isn't the other Rimmer keeping you sane?"

Lister smiled. "'s good to see ye, man. You're doin' okay? Bein' Ace? Kryten showed me the lightbee – are ye-"

"I'm fine, Lister."

"Great. That's, uh… great."

"Yes."

Silence settled over them for a moment. Then, Rimmer's mind would no longer be hushed.

"What about the _Wildfire_?" He had not meant to blurt it straight out like that. He had not meant it to sound that anxious, that desperate, but he couldn't help it.

Lister looked to the floor. "She's been pretty badly damaged. I'm no engineer, man. Jus' a useless space bum. I don't know if I can fix her. We've brought some bits back – they're in the landing bay." That seriousness, that melancholy, was new. Somehow, Rimmer found it easier to deal with that than with Lister's relentless optimism. He decided to, not so subtly, change the subject. "Why don't you take me down while we wait for Kryten to whip up a five course meal of waffles, tea cakes, muffins, scones and pie for tea? Pity we destroyed Talkie Toaster."

Lister gave a soft chuckle. "Oh no, 'e's back again. Resurrected when Kryten's nanites brought the _Dwarf_ back. We've banished 'im to the cargo hold."

They set off, comfortably falling into step beside each other. "So how have you been, Listy?" Rimmer asked softly, not wanting anyone to overhear him using his normal voice. "Still not space-crazy?"

"Nah. Spend the last year in the brig on floor 13 – didn't feel like being in space, to be honest. Life's been pretty interesting, you know. Met Kochanski again – well, another version of her. In 'er dimension, she was the last human alive, and Holly brought me back as a hologram to keep her sane. Wonder what kept 'im sane."

"You didn't get along?" Rimmer couldn't help feeling a little smug. Hadn't he always told Lister that it would never work out with him and Kochanski? She had dumped him for a reason, after all.

"Not really. Not like that, anyway. She kept going on and on about '_er Dave_. And Kryten didn't really like her, either."

"So how is rubber head? And the Cat? Same old 'Let's blast them out of the sky with our laser canons' – 'An excellent plan, Mr Cat, with only two small flaws: One, we don't have any laser canons, and two, we don't have any laser canons.'" Rimmer did the voices without thinking about it, so used to re-enacting his former crewmates for Susan that he never thought about how Lister would react to it – until the self-declared space-bum stopped dead in his tracks, staring at him.

Uncomfortable, Rimmer slipped back into being Ace, for the first time since he'd been around Lister again. "Skipper? Something wrong?"

"No, I'm sorry, man – smeg don't do this, don't give me that Ace crap, I can't take it right now, okay? I… missed you, man. I thought you'd died. 's jus' the other you did that voice impression thing only yesterday. And I 'aven't slept much, really."

"Lister, you should go to bed. You're starting to babble nonsense." And still… "You missed _me_?"

"Oi, don't let it get to yer head! You've changed, but ye're still a smeghead!"

"He remembers me!"

To Rimmer's surprise, Lister actually chuckled. "Kryten even had to cook up a thing in the AR for me – called it the Rimmer Experience. He'd composed it from your diary. It annoyed the smeg out of me the first time, but after a while it was actually quite funny."

"Which diary?"

"The one you wanted to leave to the aspirin' officers following' in your footsteps. I don't think Kryten read past the first few pages – seriously messed up, Rimmer."

"Yes, well, that didn't turn out as planned." Rimmer meant both the diary, which had become a lot more personal and private after Gazpacho Soup Day, and his attempts at becoming an officer.

"Don't say that – ye made it, man. You became Ace." Lister looked at him, taking in the signs of aging. "How long has it been?"

"About ten years. It's hard to tell when you jump between dimensions – time isn't always entirely linear."

"You must have done well, then."

He had gotten eleven dimensions destroyed, over ten trillion people killed, had crashed the _Wildfire_ beyond repair and would die without being able to recruit a replacement Ace, breaking the chain. Yes, he'd done well!

"Rimmer? Rimmer, are you all right?"

Rimmer jerked out of his thoughts at the sensation of Lister's hand on his arm. As far as he could remember, he'd last heard that worried tone from Lister when he had collapsed during his last exam before Lister went into stasis and had been carted off to sickbay, completely out of it. He wasn't that far gone now, was he?

"Ye look like ye've seen a ghost. Is it the lightbee? Do you need rest?"

Rimmer slipped away, bringing some of the space he was used to between them. "No, I'm fine. The lightbee is still repairing, that's all. Can we see the _Wildfire_ now?"

They walked the remaining distance in silence, but Rimmer would have been unable to utter anything anyway as soon as they stepped onto the gantry in the landing bay and he was able to look down at the pile of debris they had brought back from the planet. It hardly looked like the _Wildfire _at all. The entire cockpit was there, but except for one solar panel which should not be where it was in the first place, the rear of the ship was missing completely. Without it, the damage to the cockpit looked even worse. He closed his hands around the gantry's safety railing, fighting the urge to press it until he had crushed it in his fist. Once he'd gotten past the pain barrier, being a hard light hologram actually made him quite physically strong.

"I've tried charging up the mainframe with the solar panels, but I need a battery to go in between," Lister explained, hardly noticing Rimmer's reaction.

"Can you access the data?" His own hyperlink to the _Wildfire_'s computer was dead, either because he had been damaged so badly, or because the power was too low – or because the data was no longer there.

"Jus' the flight recorder," Lister was saying. "Though it doesn't make much sense. Holly says it's only for dimension jumping experts. The blackbox also recorded, but the files are password protected. Holly is uploading them to his database. We've gathered what we could find of your belongings from the rear of the ship. It's down there, in a trunk."

"Thanks," Rimmer said, and meant it. The _Wildfire _was not going to fly soon. If he was going to be on _Red Dwarf _for a while, he would rather have an eye on his personal, private things until he left than have them lying on that moon – or worse, have the Cat snoop around in them. Somehow, Rimmer doubted that the humanoid had shaken the habit of declaring 'shiny' things 'mine' and carrying them off – then again, for the Cat, this was Ace's stuff. He probably had too much respect for the hero to actually go through his belongings. It was laughable, really.

_If_ he ever got _off Red Dwarf_ again, of course. He mused that there might be worse places to be stuck in, but couldn't think of any off hand.

"Rimmer, are you okay? You've gone awfully quiet."

"The other Rimmer quite the chatterbox, is he?" Rimmer snapped before he could stop himself. He was not stupid – he could recognise the reaction for what it was: a defence mechanism because he was feeling vulnerable, but Lister somehow had always had a nag for bringing those out. Rimmer dragged in a large gulp of air. "Sorry. That was uncalled for."

Lister looked more surprised at the apology than the actual snap. "'s okay. And no, I s'pose he isn't. He's not quite you though – I mean he's you, jus' not _you_ – you know what I'm sayin'."

Rimmer nodded, taking the lead on the steps down into the landing bay. "Go on."

"Well, he doesn't have any memories of dyin' or bein' a hologram because the nanites reconstructed the _Dwarf _from before the accident, right? An' I guess I've been treatin' 'im differently than I used to treat ye back then. Sorry, I guess? I was jus' so blown away about everyone dyin'."

"Are you finally finished with your soppy reunion? I can't _believe_ I'm seeing this."

"Rimmer!"

Nano-Rimmer stepped out of the shadows under the gantry, where Rimmer could spot a large, open trunk. Of course.

Lister did not appear exactly pleased to see his counterpart. "What are you doing down here, man?"

"_I _was looking for some proof that _he_ is me."

"Of _course_ he's you! I told you, man!"

Holo-Rimmer held up his hand. "Lister-"

The Liverpudlian didn't even seem to hear him, though the other Rimmer certainly had, shooting a glare in his direction. "He's _hardly_ me. I could barely believe my eyes when I first saw him – honestly, look at that outfit!"

"I'm tellin' ye – he is you. The outfit is jus' Ace."

"Yes, a fat lot of good, your hero – the first thing he did after waking up was collapsing in pain and moaning after some woman."

Rimmer flinched. He'd known this couldn't end well – this was exactly how he had reacted when they had first met Ace. To be fair, this was still how he reacted when he was forced to be Ace for an extended period of time. But this hardly mattered now. "Just leave it alone, would you? I'm not staying. As soon as my ship is repaired, I'll get out of your hair."

"Oh no, matey – I know exactly what you're doing – running from the argument. You're just a smegging coward, and tell you what – that pile of junk is not going anywhere. You might as well hurl yourself out of an airlock and call it spacefaring, you baked potato."

"Leave the _Wildfire_ out of this, you stuck-up, self-important git."

"Rimmer! And Rimmer!" Lister jumped between them. "Would you stop it?"

They both ignored him – they had mastered ignoring Lister within the first two weeks of bunking with him.

Nano-Rimmer removed his hand from behind his back, revealing one of the guns that had once adorned Rimmer's bunk. "You just had to take these, hadn't you? Make you feel like a proper soldier, do they? I had always wondered where the non-nanite version of these had ended up. They found everything else in the _Starbug_'s wreckage – even the golf clubs. I have two full sets, now." He hefted the gun in his hand, oblivious to the fact that every trace of emotion had been wiped from his alter ego's face.

Holo-Rimmer carefully stepped closer, to where Lister was, and immediately found the gun sloppily drained on him. "Be careful with those."

The other Rimmer sneered. "Why? Don't you want the wood scratched? Do you still polish them, like we used to? _Priceless antiques_, eh? Have you ever even told Lister that they are fake replicas – they can't even carry any bullets." He squeezed the trigger ever so slightly.

Then, everything happened in a split second. The gun went off with a bang. Nano-Rimmer dropped it in shock. The bullet sped through the air. Holo-Rimmer pushed Lister out of the way. The bullet crashed into his left shoulder. Lister screamed something. The pain brought holo-Rimmer to his knees, then his lightbee drew power and booted up, pushing the bullet out of his hard light body and dropping it right into his palm.

He stood up, and time was back on track.

"Well _done_, Rimmer!" Lister said, glaring at nano-Rimmer, who still stood frozen in shock, smoking gun at his feet. "Are you okay?" he asked, looking at holo-Rimmer.

Rimmer nodded, showing him the bullet. "Yes – hard light hologram. Basically indestructible. It was a good thing it wasn't the gun I had loaded with holo-bullets."

"How did you know it wasn't?"

"I didn't. They are an identical pair."

Lister gave him an odd glance, then rounded on nano-Rimmer, fuming. Holo-Rimmer stepped into his way, picking up the gun while his alter ego backed away. "The replicas were still on _Red Dwarf _when we lost it. I had these made by a GELF merchant in one of the first dimensions I visited."

"Ye could have killed 'im, man! Ye could have killed me!"

"Leave him alone, Listy," holo-Rimmer said, quietly.

The two Rimmers locked gazes, then nano-Rimmer tore himself away and fled.

Lister still looked like he wanted to run screaming up the wall. "He's such a smeghead!"

Rimmer smiled, his lips pressed together. "He _is_ me." He engaged the safety on the gun, then returned it to its counterpart in the trunk, glancing over his belongings. As far as he could see, everything was still there – in particular everything potentially dangerous. "And he couldn't have known. These are identical to the replicas."

"How did _you _get two guns?" Lister asked, appearing at his shoulder. "You couldn't even handle bazookoids."

"Bazookoids aren't guns, Lister. Besides, do you think Ace can go running around kicking Simulants in the groin or knocking them over the head with bits of piping?"

"I s'pose not. So what's this about a woman, then? He wasn't ju' takin' the smeg, was he?"

"No – though he misinterpreted. I wasn't referring to a woman as such." Rimmer threw a pointed look back at the _Wildfire_.

"Wha – the ship? Ye nearly died and yer first thought was the ship?"

"She _has _been my home for ten years, Listy. The only place I could be me, really."

Lister's eyes travelled over the wreckage. "Smeg. I'm so sorry, man. I promise ye we'll fix her."


	6. Dying

**VI. Dying**

Kryten was waiting for them in the bunkroom they were currently using, which was a change from what Rimmer remembered – it was more spacious, but also not as pristine as the officers' quarters they had used for a while. It looked far more as though it belonged on _Red Dwarf_, reddish, messy, a conglomeration of odds and ends. Rimmer's bottom bunk still looked as tidy as it had always been, though slightly more used than it had when he had been a soft light hologram. Also, for once, there were some of his own belongings – or rather, nano-Rimmer's – scattered across the room, not only Lister's.

Kryten had obviously tidied up in a hurry, and now the table was set for tea, a plate of hot, sweet-smelling cookies in the centre.

'Ace' punched Kryten on the shoulder comradely. "This looks great, Kryties. I can't wait to taste those biscuits."

"Oh, Mr Ace, sir – it was no bother at all," Kryten gushed, fiddling with his cooking apron. "I didn't know how you liked your tea. Mr Rimmer takes milk and three sugar – is that fine?"

"Perfect, Kryten, thanks." Rimmer draped himself casually onto the chair, trying not to frown when Lister grabbed a cookie with his greasy fingers, munched it and then licked his fingers clean. "Come and join us, old chum!"

"Oh, no, sir, I shouldn't." Kryten pulled off his apron, folding it.

"Of course you should, Kryt," Lister said, between bites. "These are really amazing."

The Cat chose that moment to dance inside, wearing a flashy suit and obviously styled for the occasion. "Ace, bud! How are you?"

"Hello, Cat – nice suit!"

The Cat beamed a toothy smile. "Thanks. Looking good yourself."

Rimmer doubted that – his hard light form was far more sensitive to his physical condition than the soft light, and he was pretty sure that if he felt like death warmed up, he looked some of it, as well. He closed his hand around the teacup while Cat and Kryten settled down. It almost felt like old times – almost, if there hadn't been the persistent pain in his gut, the ridiculous costume and wig, and the second Rimmer, who briefly appeared in the door, met his gaze, then turned on his heels and walked away.

He settled into narrating one of his adventures as Ace, which delighted both Kryten and Cat. Lister seemed happily occupied with the food, but he kept shooting strange glances into Rimmer's direction as if he were trying to decipher some kind of subtextual meaning of which even Rimmer wasn't aware.

Personally, he wasn't feeling too good. Being Ace, talking about his successes, pretending it hadn't all gone horribly wrong was getting to him. He could feel a tension headache building behind his eyes, and he could only force himself to eat one biscuit before his stomach rebelled. The tea, though – the tea was a gift from the gods.

"So, where will you stay?" The Cat asked, forcing Rimmer's attention back to the present.

Rimmer looked at Lister. Somehow, the question had never occurred to him until it had been brought up. There was no empty bunk to return to – it was nano-Rimmer's, now. "I'm afraid the _Wildfire_ is not up to anything right now, so I must ask to impose upon you here."

"You are not imposing, Mr Ace, sir," Kryten protested at the same time as Cat declared: "You can have my bunk."

"Thank you, I wouldn't dream of depriving you of your snoozing place, old chum. I will be perfectly happy in some empty charters."

Kryten climbed to his feet immediately. "I'll prepare the penthouse suite for you immediately, sir."

"There is no need, Kryters, sit down. I should be happy with a spare room on this deck."

Kryten looked scandalised. "This deck? But sir-"

"I'm used to far more cramped quarters, dear chap. I wouldn't know what to do with all that space."

Kryten still didn't look too happy. "Next door, then?"

Rimmer nodded, and didn't try to stop the mechanoid this time as he bustled out, to prepare the room and fetch Ace's things. He finished the tea, weary of being the centre of attention, but trying to maintain an air of casualness and general Ace-ness, though he could feel the façade slipping. He should have been enjoying this, shouldn't he? Telling the people he knew best about the things he had achieved? Proving to them what he was really capable of?

The lack of answer, of any kind of input from the _Wildfire_, constantly at the back of his head for ten years, was starting to disquiet him. It was strange, really, that he had gotten used to it so quickly – after all, what were ten years in his six hundred odd years of existence, not counting downtime and the three millions years between his death and resurrection?

The Cat seemed finally to catch on that not everything was all right. "Ace, bud, are you okay?"

"Apologies, old chum – just a bit tired. I should get some rest when Kryten comes back."

"But I wanted to show you my suits!" Cat protested.

"Later, dear chap."

"Leave 'im alone, Cat. 'e's almost died in that crash," Lister said, drawing the Cat's attention away from Rimmer for a merciful second.

"What's gotten into you anyway? You've hardly said a word the entire time. Didn't you two always get along so well?"

"Jus' leave it, Cat."

Rimmer was saved from further attention by Kryten's return and immediately pushed himself to his feet. "Now, please excuse me, chaps. It has been a long day."

"Oh, but Mr Ace – you've barely eaten any cookies at all!"

"I didn't want to impose when everyone else was so obviously enjoying them – but if there are any left over, feel free to bring them by my room later, Kryts. See you all later, chaps." Rimmer tried not to make it appear as though he were fleeing, but he was grateful when the door whizzed shut behind him. The relief was short-lived – his alter ego was leaning against the wall outside, arms crossed.

"You're not fine, though, are you?" he said.

Rimmer felt a strange sense of déjà vu. "No." He keyed open the door to the next room, finding it perfectly cleaned and orderly, the trunk with his stuff sitting neatly in one corner. It was a single bunk room, small and cosy, with a little window out into space. "Can I have a word?"

Nano-Rimmer didn't reply, but followed him inside, waiting by the door as Rimmer sat down on the bunk. "It's not the bullet, though, is it?"

"No. _Lock_." Now that they were alone, Rimmer dropped the accent, the entire act. The lightbee, now at full power, sensed his change of mood, adapting his appearance until he was sitting on the bunk barefoot, wrapped in his favourite red dressing gown.

His alter ego didn't look too comfortable with the change, shifting from one foot to the other. "So…"

"I'm dying Arn."

Nano-Rimmer's chin dropped. "You're dying? But how can you be dying? You are a hologram."

Rimmer took a deep breath. He would need to do something against that headache soon, but this was important. He couldn't screw this up. "It is rare, but holograms can still die. And with my lifestyle…" He wasn't quite ready to tell the entire truth yet.

His alter ego sat down heavily at the chair that came with the room's small table. "… I'm sorry."

Rimmer did not say 'I've brought it on myself', though the words were sitting at the tip of his tongue. Instead, he said: "Lister has told you all about Ace, hasn't he."

"Yes, well-" Nano-Rimmer's eyes grew wide. "Oh, no, I couldn't! I'm not him – I can't be him! I can't even tell a fake gun from a real one! I can't even pass my astronavigation exams! I'm just a worthless, useless goit – I can't be a hero! I couldn't even _fly_ that ship."

"You're me – you are exactly like me up until the accident. _I _never passed my astronavigation exam. You don't need that to fly the _Wildfire_ – she can do the math for you. Just a bit of common sense-"

"Yes, but _you _spent smeg knows how many years having adventures in space – the only adventures I ever had were being nearly eaten by a bird regressed into a dinosaur and twisting my ankle, nearly drowning, and almost being shot in the head by Lister – with a harpoon!"

Rimmer decided he didn't want to know. "_I_ spent those years running and hiding from any danger, obsessing about aliens that never existed, creating my own personal hell – twice! – and convicting myself of second degree murder in over 1000 cases!"

Nano-Rimmer stared, stunned into silence – almost. "Second degree murder? I never got so much as a parking ticket."

"You're forgetting about the drive plate."

"The drive plate? What's the radiation leak got to do with anything?"

"You don't remember, do you? And Lister hasn't told you. How nice of him." Rimmer wasn't even sure he meant it entirely sarcastically. "It was us. We were mending the drive plate and didn't seal it properly. That radiation leak was entirely our fault."

This time, nano-Rimmer truly was beyond words.

Rimmer massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to contain the headache. "Look, I am sorry I had to break it on you like that. But you can make up for it all. You can become Ace – do the right thing, for once."

"But I'm not a hologram. I could get killed!"

"The _Wildfire_ can resurrect you as a hard light hologram. She has done the same for thousands of Aces."

"But I would have to wear that wig!"

Rimmer sighed. "Yes," he said, simply. "You'll get used to it." Not that _he_ ever really had. "Believe me – I know it looks impossible, but you can do it."

Nano-Rimmer folded his arms, leaning back in the chair. "So what are the peaks?"

"You get to be a hero. You get to lead battles. People will congratulate you. Thank you. People _like_ you. You'll get an amazing ship and a chance to see the universe. Plus lots of sex with beautiful women…" He might have been exaggerating a bit, but he remembered how he had been like before he had died.

"No, thank you. I have had enough meaningless sex to last me a lifetime."

This time, it was Rimmer's turn to be stunned. "What?"

"Yes, well, Lister decided it would be a good idea to pour a whole tube of that sexual magnetism virus over me – though, frankly by that time I had already had enough."

"_Sexual_ what?"

"Sexual magnetism virus. How come you don't know about that? Holly said you'd found those ages ago. Some scientist… Longstromm?"

"Langström? Don't remind me of her!"

"So you were around!"

"Yes… she infected me with a hologrammatic virus. Not one of my best days." Rimmer swung his legs up onto the bunk and lay back, exhausted. "Lister never told me that they'd brought back some of her research."  
"Well, when does he ever tell us something interesting?"

Rimmer's first instinct was to agree with his nanite alter ego, but then he thought back to all the times Lister had come barging into the bunkroom to tell him of some exiting discovery before he had left to become Ace, and said nothing about it. "You won't _have_ to have sex if you don't want to. But you'll have the opportunities."

"So basically I slip into that ridiculous role and I get everything I ever wanted? How come you don't seem too happy?"

Rimmer knew there was no point in lying. "You will _have_ to be Ace whenever you are in public. You can't ever let anyone know you're not. You won't be able to be yourself."

"Why would I want to be myself?"

There was no answer to that. This Rimmer did not have his experiences, and there was no way he could make him understand with words alone. "It is dangerous. Deathly, exhausting, heartbreaking. You will have to start running towards danger instead of away from it. You can screw up badly. But you will have the most fun and success you've ever had in your life."

"But I can't just disappear – the others-"

"We will find a way. Besides, the _Wildfire_ is not going to fly soon, and I am not dead yet. There will be plenty of time to train you – and to practice. But right now, I really need to rest."

Nano-Rimmer stood, kneading his hands. "Anything I can get you?"

"Just make sure no one bursts in here. And not a word to the others."


	7. Revealing Rimmer

**A/N: **Sorry for the slight delay. I have hit an unexpected snag in my progress with this fic due to feeling the need to catch up with nine serieses of a new fandom, but I hope to get some work done on this story this week, so here you go with the next chapter. Hope you are still enjoying it!

* * *

**VII. Revealing Rimmer**

Rimmer waited until his alter ego had definitely left, locking the door behind him, before he rolled to his side to face the screen and call on Holly again. He still found it a bit strange to see him back in his male form – he had gotten used to having a female computer around.

"So you've told him, have you," Holly said by a way of greeting.

"Can I just have something against the headache, please, Hol?"

"I'm not your mum."

"No, you're not. I would never have asked my mother for headache pills," Rimmer snapped back, missing the _Wildfire_. "Just do it, would you?"

Holly didn't even seem to hear him – or ignored him deliberately. "There is a way out of this, you know. I could wipe your memory."

Rimmer was silent for a moment, considering. Wipe his memory? Forget all about why the _Wildfire _was wreck, why ten trillion people and eleven dimensions no longer existed, delete the reason for his guilt and, therefore, the guilt? Ten years ago, he probably wouldn't have hesitated. Just after the accident, he _definitely_ wouldn't have hesitated. Holly had never offered to wipe his memory then – but then, his guilt hadn't been enough to kill him. Forgetting – it would mean being puzzled over the _Wildfire_'s destruction for a while, until she was fixed, deleting all blackbox recordings of the incident, wiping the flight recorder, the repair log of his lightbee, squabbling with Lister, who, though he hadn't asked yet, was bound to, and then – back to being Ace. Back out there, to a life so stressful that Kryten's worry balls would shrivel and die, back to the costume, the wig, the loneliness.

"Stay out of my head, you poor excuse for an AI."

"Oi! No need to get nasty."

"Just leave me be, Holly, all right?"

"Have it your way." And Holly left, without doing anything about the headache.

In the end, Rimmer was forced to climb out of the bed, stumble into the shower cabinet to find the first-aid box and swallow one of the nanite generated painkillers, even though his hologrammatic stomach was less than thrilled at the intake of real food, and then crawl back into bed, pulling the covers smelling of Kryten's favourite washing detergent and _Red Dwarf _ship issue synthetic over his head.

"_Arn? Arnie? Arnooold. Oi, bonehead!" _

_Arnold jerked out of his slumber, staring at the skylight above his bed – and straight into the leering face of his brother Howard, Frank hovering just behind him. They had broken open the skylight – but that was not the worst bit. The worst bit was that Howard was holding a glass with a very, very large and ugly spider, just ready to tip it over and down onto Arnie's bedsheets. He let out a tiny, undignified squeak and tried to scramble away – but he was tangled up in the sheets and didn't get far. _

_The spider dropped to the roaring laughter of his brothers. It sat there, just shy of his feet under the covers, stunned, staring at Arnie out of murderous black eyes. The boy had frozen in shock. He had not had any food for two days and had tried to sleep through the pounding headache and growling stomach, but how could he when that… thing was in the room. He stared, breath coming in short, sharp gasps, until he was full out hyperventilating, his brothers' laughter echoing eerily in his ears. _

_Then Howard dropped the glass, squishing the spider then and there – and they were gone. Arnie bit his lip until it bled to stop the scream dead in his throat, then scooted out of the bed, eyes fixed on the disgusting black splotch on his favourite sheets. He took his pillow with him and retreated into the furthest corner of the room, hugging the pillow, and unable to take his eyes off the… thing, not trusting it to be dead, his skull pounding with a headache that made his eyes water. _

_And suddenly, the spider rose off the sheets – twice, thrice, ten times as large as it had been, mandibles clicking as it advanced on Rimmer, who cowered in the far corner of the cargo hold, blocking its access to the only door into the station. He cradled his gun, knowing there was only one bullet left, and having no idea where to hit that horrible mutant GELF to put all other GELFs to shame. Susan was chattering away in his head, something about the exoskeleton – but he could hardly hear her over the rushing of blood in his ears. He took aim as the… thing scuttled closer and fired. The spider burst apart – bits and pieces scattering into all directions, sharp shards of chitin bouncing off his hard light form as he tried to shield his face with his arms._

_And then – everything around him exploded in the dizzying whirl of a dimension jump – only it wasn't. Lilac shards of matter, bits and pieces of dimensions, shot around him, not touching, but each fragment cutting into his innards as though someone had stuck a knife into his lightbee, and his head was splitting with a tearing sound, and finally he screamed and screamed and screamed-_

"For smeg's sake, Rimmer! Holly, do something! Wake him up!"

"I can't do that, Dave – I don't have access to his lightbee!"

Lister shook Rimmer by the shoulders again, and yelled straight into the hologram's ear: "Rimmer! Wake up!"

Finally, Rimmer shot upright, nearly butting Lister on the head – his eyes were wide with panic, his mouth still open for a scream which never came. Rimmer swallowed it down with a hiccough as he became aware of his surroundings, his features in control once more though he could not banish the haunted look entirely, his eyes glistening, jaw set and lips pressed together. He averted his gaze.

"What's going on!?" Cat burst into the room, Kryten hot on his heels. They both took in the scene with a single glance – how couldn't they. The room was not very large, nor were there any models dancing the hula in a corner to distract them from Rimmer, sitting on the bunk with hunched shoulders, and Lister, kneeling by his side, the hand that he had used to shake Rimmer awake resting on the mattress as if he wanted to place a comforting hand on the other man's arm but didn't.

"Hey, Toilet Brush Head! That's Ace's room. What are you doing in here?"

Rimmer shot the Cat a glare that was just the slightest bit shaky.

"Mr Rimmer, sir," Kryten began, then his gaze caught on Rimmer's red dressing gown. "Oh, sir – I don't recall washing that gown for you before – didn't you want me to starch it?"

"Oh, shut up, you animated vacuum cleaner," Rimmer said with fervour, which earned him another one of those odd looks from Lister.

"No, seriously." The Cat waved his hand about, his numerous rings glittering fetchingly. "We heard screaming. What's going on?"

"I had a smegging nightmare, that's what's going on! Now leave me alone."

Lister nudged his arm. "Come on, let's get back to the bunkroom. I'm sure Ace won't mind." He placed a bit of undue emphasis on _Ace_, but Rimmer got his meaning, locking a slightly desperate gaze with him before he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Lister? What's going on?" They all stared at nano-Rimmer as he walked in, most certainly _not_ Ace. He instantly looked as though he wanted to sink through the floor. "Oh."

Kryten popped out his eyes, polishing them, before squeaking them back into his eye sockets and staring, open-mouthed. Cat just stared, his head oscillating from one Rimmer to the other. "That's Toilet Brush Head – I can tell from his smell." Cat jabbed a thumb towards nano-Rimmer, completely ignoring the glare. "Then he must be – Alphabet Head? But he died! And where is Ace?"

"_I _am Ace, you simple-minded feline," Rimmer snapped, not caring at all for the blank look that earned him.

"No seriously, why'd you bring him back? And where's Ace?"

Rimmer got to his feet. Enough was enough. "Would you try to understand, you narcissistic moron? I. Am. Ace."

"No seriously-"

Right, that was it. He couldn't stand this for one more minute or he'd snap. "Look, I'm not going to wait around until you've figured it out. You can do that on your own, or maybe Lister will enlighten you. You will be relieved you won't have to waste valuable napping time by showing me your stupid suits. I'm not going to stick around." He brushed past the three men at the door, stalking away down the corridor, never mind that he was not even wearing shoes, just the white socks that came with his pyjamas.

"Rimmer, wait!" Lister called after him, but the hologram did not even pause. Lister looked at the other Rimmer, who understood instantly. With a soft "right", he also turned and followed his alter ego down the corridor.

Kryten and Cat stared after them until they had disappeared around a corner, then looked back at Lister. The human sighed. "Look, I'll try and explain."

~oOo~

"Come again?"

"Cat, how many times? Ace died, and Rimmer took his place. I've been telling you – this has been going on for ages."

"I get that. Ace dies, and another Ace takes over."

"That's right."

"So what happened to him, and where did Alphabet Head come from? Didn't we drop his lightbee off in space?"

Lister groaned. "Listen – last time Ace visited us, _he_ died. Rimmer became 'im. 'e became Ace. And now 'e's back, only there are now two of them, because the nanites resurrected Rimmer along with the rest of the crew of _Red Dwarf_."

"So what happened to Ace?"

"Cat!" Lister ground his teeth. He could swear the Cat was being deliberately obtuse sometimes. "Ace is Rimmer. Rimmer became Ace. He is Ace. They are one and the same."

Kryten let out a strange, high pitched giggle, which earned him a glare from Lister. The mechanoid instantly shut himself up and looked ashamed. "I am sorry, Mr Lister. It is just such an extraordinary outlandish concept to grasp. Mr Rimmer becoming Ace – really, sir. Such a great joke."

"I'm _not_ kiddin' ye! Rimmer is Ace. That's why he was in Ace's room, in Ace's bunk, because he is Ace!"

"Now come on, bud. This is not funny anymore."

"'m not kiddin'!"

"Seriously? Alphabet Head? Are we talking about the same guy? You can't expect me to believe that, buddy."

Lister stood up, annoyed. "Sometimes I think Rimmer is right about you two, you know." And he walked out on them, leaving the cat and the mechanoid sitting in their chairs, stunned.

~oOo~

Rimmer found Ace – well, Rimmer – where he had expected to find him – in the very same place he always went to when he needed to think since they had free reign of _Red Dwarf_: the Observation Dome. The hologram had changed his clothes somewhere along the line, or asked Holly to change them, however that worked for holograms, and was now wearing a brim, blue military style tunic Rimmer himself could have gotten used to instead of his greyish brown ship issue uniform, and was staring out into space, hands dangling uselessly by his sides. He looked horrible – almost as bad as when Holly had first rebooted him.

"Hey," Rimmer said, and then had no idea how to go on.

Holo-Rimmer turned around to face him, leaning against the safety railings and crossing his arms. "Hey."

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened back there. I'd heard screaming and I thought-"

The other Rimmer shrugged. "It's okay. I had no idea how to explain you taking my place anyway."

"I haven't decided yet."

"Yes, you have, m'laddo. Who are you kidding?"

Rimmer didn't know how to reply to that. "How do you even do the voice?"

'Ace' raised an eyebrow, wrinkling his nose. "Of all the things you could ask me, that's the first you could think of?"

"It's important, isn't it?"

"Yes – but you just do it like we always do. And Susan always has soothers for your throat, if you need them."

"Who is she, then?"

"Oh, the _Wildfire_'s computer. She doesn't really have a name, but it's easier than calling her 'computer' all the time."

"Susan," Rimmer said, trying it out. It sat easily on his tongue.

'Ace' was watching him with a thoughtful expression, it was disquieting.

"Is there nothing you can do about the pain? You look horrible."

Holo-Rimmer seemed surprised for a moment that his alter ego could tell, but he caught himself quickly. "I'll go back to sleep once the excitement has blown over. It should give my lightbee a bit of time to repair some of the damage, bring my T-count back down."

"You could have the bunk – you know, my bunk. I wouldn't mind. And I won't bother you. I wanted to get some revision done, anyway."

'Ace' nodded. "Thanks."  
"It's a shame you're dying, really. I think we could really get along."

"No, believe me, it's better this way. Me and me – that never really worked out."

"But I will meet other Rimmers in other dimensions?"

"Oh yes. Beware of the female one. She is disgusting."

"Female Rimmers?"

"Just stay away from her."

~oOo~

Lister headed straight for the bunkroom, which he found locked with the code Rimmer and he used to keep the Cat and Kryten out. He let himself in, and came face to face with two Rimmers, one curled up on the bottom bunk, the other sitting at the table, an astronavigation book laid out before him and a finger pressed to his lips. "Be quiet, Listy. You don't want to wake him."

Lister dropped his hat on the table and slid into a chair. "I don't know what's gotten into Kryten and the Cat. They are bein' complete smegheads about this."

"What were you expecting?"

"Well, they could show some understanding for once."

Rimmer scoffed. "Seriously? A crash dummy and an inbred furball?"

"What's got you into such a good mood?"

"Look, Listy, why don't you go on and repair the _Wildfire_, eh? Then all our problems will be over."

"Hang on – which Rimmer are ye?"

Rimmer looked honestly startled. "You mean you can't tell?"

"Of course I can't smeggin' tell! You are identical!"

"No, we're not."

"Yes, you are. Smeggin' identical. If I didn't know one of you was the hologram and the other alive, there would be no tellin' you apart."

"But I have completely different memories to him!"

"Yeah, and how am I supposed to see that, man?"

"Look, if you want to keep fighting about whether it is possible to tell us apart, could you do it more quietly? I am trying to catch some sleep," the Rimmer on the bunk spoke up, shifting to his back.

"Sorry, Rimmer." Lister looked over at him. "Smeg, Rimmer, you look horrible. What's wrong, man? And don't say you're fine, because I can tell you aren't."

Rimmer moved an arm up to rest his head on the hand, settling more comfortable into the pillows. "It's just a headache, Listy."

"Didn't know you got those. Didn't know you got nightmares, either."

"Of course I get nightmares!" the Rimmer on the desk protested. "Do you think a lifetime of being bullied and failing at everything of importance isn't going to cause nightmares?"

Lister's glance travelled between them, feeling as though he was talking to some kind of optical illusion and half expecting to find the real, single Rimmer somewhere between them. "No, but you've never screamed before – and you sounded really terrified, too."

Both Rimmers remained silent, bearing identical expressions of mild discomfiture and shame.

"Would you smeggin' stop that? Ye're driving me crazy. Right, which one of you is Ace?"

"I am," they both said, at the same time, without even a second's hesitation from either of them.

Lister was about ready to tear out his hair, but the two Rimmers seemed to find it hilarious, both wearing the same stupid grin on their faces, with the exception, perhaps, of the fact that Lister could see the eyes of the Rimmer sitting opposite him sparkle mischievously while the other had his eyes closed. "Very clever, Rimmer. Now stop it before I get Holly to turn you into soft light."

Bunk-Rimmer sighed. "Very well, Listy, though it is not like he could, anyway."

"Why not?"

"I've made some improvements on the lightbee over the years. When it is at full power, it is completely independent from any computer mainframe. Holly can't mess with it unless I let him. It has been quite useful out there."

"You made improvements on your lightbee? How?"

"The _Wildfire_ is perfectly capable of fully hosting a hard light hologram – didn't you know?"

"No, man. I've really been concentrating on getting the AI back up – perhaps there are automated repair mechanisms."

Rimmer nodded. "There are. Anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah – get some rest, and stay away from Cat and Kryten. They've flipped, man – they are simply refusing to accept that you are Ace."

"Is that so strange?" nano-Rimmer asked. "Even I wouldn't believe it."

"Yeah, but they practically saw it with their own eyes. Besides, it is not like they are going to meet Ace if they walk around the ship now."

"Didn't you say Holly had uploaded the blackbox recordings?"

"Yeah?"

"Mind if I take a look?"

"You know the password?"

"Of course I know the smegging password. I'm Ace – or had you forgotten."

"Don't be like that, Rimmer."

"Just pass me that tablet thing, would you?" Rimmer held out his hand for the electronic reader his alter ego had been using to read in bed, even though it had originally found its way into their room while Rimmer had been a soft light hologram because it could be voice controlled.

Lister would never have stooped to playing fetch for Rimmer, but the hologram look so pale and worn that he decided to indulge him for once.

"The headphones as well, Listy. You don't need to hear this."

"No, but I want to, man! Your visit is the most exciting' thing that has 'appened in weeks!"

"Be that as it may, Lister, I cannot allow you to hear this. This is for the eyes of Aces only."

"What, the sound of you wanking away alone in your bunk?"

"Yes, let's stoop to lame jokes about my sex life, why don't we. Of course not, you moron! There is sensitive information in those blackbox recordings! Top secret information. Why do you think they were password protected in the first place?"

"For the same reason you hide your diary in the _A-Z of _Red Dwarf?"

Nano-Rimmer slammed his book down on the table. "How does he know that?!"

"Because he's read it. Aloud. To the Cat," Holo-Rimmer explained, hooking up the tablet to the connection socket in the wall of the bunk with the cables that came with it.

"Oi, you don't have to look so scandalised! You've read mine!" Lister told nano-Rimmer.

"Yes, but at least I had the common decency to do it sneakily behind your back!"

"That's what I said." Holo-Rimmer settled the tablet onto his knees. "Holly, can you patch the blackbox recordings through to the reader for me, please?"

"You got it, Arn."

"Thanks muchly."

Lister watched Rimmer punch away on the tablet, finding it incredibly strange that he actually seemed to know what he was doing, even though he was still doing it in a very Rimmer-like way. "Rimmer?"

"Hm?"

"I've been meanin' to ask – do ye enjoy bein' Ace, then? I mean I know you hate the wig and the voice an' all that, but do you enjoy it? You seem pretty eager to get back to it."

"Oh, it's fan-smegging-tastic, Listy. Just dandy. The excitement, the women – oh, the women! You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen, Listy." Rimmer had never even looked up from the screen, and now proceeded to pluck in the headphones. "Right, here we go. I just need to check something."

Lister looked over to the other Rimmer, who hurriedly burrowed his nose in the astronavigation book. Lister shrugged and decided to leave them to it. He needed to sort things with Cat and Kryten, anyway.


	8. Convincing Rimmer

**A/N: **Only a shortish chapter this week. But I think I have enough of a buffer now to post at least every two weeks, if not necessarily every week. Hope there are still readers out there enjoying this! I would love to hear your thoughts now that the story is well on its way.

* * *

**VIII. Convincing Rimmer**

Rimmer lowered the tablet the moment Lister was gone, pulling the headphones off. "Finally."

His alter ego had also stopped reading, but was staring of into space – or rather, at the door that had closed behind Lister. "You were taking the smeg, weren't you, when you said it was fantastic. You lied."

"I already _told_ you how it is like."

"You realise this is doing nothing to convince _me_ to take your place."

Rimmer felt his own gaze becoming distant, but the forced himself back into the present, back to looking at the only potential successor he could hope for now. "Do you really want to be the one to break the chain?" he said, quietly, half quoting, and very aware how cruel it was to say that. How it turned what should have been an informed choice into no choice at all. He had always been one to bow to peer pressure, and this was much stronger.

The other Rimmer was staring at him. "Is that what Lister said to you before you became Ace?"

Rimmer did not feel it necessary to reply to that. "Look, it is not all bad. You won't screw up half as often as you're expecting to right now. Susan's been dealing with us for ages, she is very competent. As long as you become Ace, you'll be fine. Just use that confidence, and things will start dropping in your lap. Even the original Ace – he had a lot of skill in practical things, but I bet you his head was mostly filled with hot air."

"He must have passed his astronavs."

"No, he didn't. Never claimed he had, either. He kicked the education Father wanted for us into the bucket around the same time we tried to divorce our parents. Learned to fly in some backwater spaceport on Pluto. He happened to be on an experimental Space Corps craft when the pilot suffered a heart attack and died – he managed to divert it enough to crash it into the Channel instead of into Eastbourne, and that got him into the Corps. He went through basic training, but by that time, he was already a test pilot. Never sat his astronavs. He was merely dedicated to his duty – and brave enough to go into situations others wouldn't touch." He looked down at the tablet sitting against his knees, which had gone to screensaver. "Or stupid enough. Learned everything else in the field."

"Divert a fully functional craft for just a few miles? But all he needed to do was punch the buttons to fire up the side thrusters. Even I could have done that! Especially if I'd died if I hadn't tried."

"I know." Rimmer stretched his legs. "You know, _I _taught Kryten to fly the _Starbug_ after Lister had mangled him back together. Did I ever get a word of thanks? No. Did they ever let me even so much as touch the helm after I became hard light? No. I even managed to land that escape pod _and_ figured out the terraforming, though the cloning didn't go that well – actually, forget I ever said that. But I've been flying the _Wildfire _for ten years now – and she's arguably the most complicated ship out there. Certainly more complicated than this old crate. Besides, Holly is doing most of the actual flying around here."

"Did you ever wonder why Ace dropped everything at the first chance to leave his home dimension?"

"I don't think he had anything to lose by doing it – and everything, his entire reputation, if he hadn't. Look, I guess the multiverse just needs a superficial, annoying hero who breezes in saves the day _and_ gets all of the ladies even though he is really just a git."

Nano-Rimmer traced the title of his book with his finger. "If you had the chance to go back to being Ace – you know, if you weren't… – would you do it? Would you climb into the _Wildfire_ as soon as she was fixed and jump off to the next dimension, to save the day?"

Rimmer had been afraid of that question. He wasn't even sure what his answer should be. Surely he had to tell his successor that yes, he would do it without waiting even one second, that he couldn't wait to get back to being popular, being successful, being _liked_ and loved? Surely that had to be the truth, hadn't it? Why would he want to stay here, on this old crate full of smegheads who didn't like or respect him, anyway, from whom he had always wanted to get away? Why would he even want to be him, worthless, useless piece of – a thing as useless as himself had yet to be discovered. He missed the _Wildfire_ passionately, to a point where the ferocity of his grief surprised him. But what use were the successes, really? They weren't really his, were they? And he still wasn't an officer. He could just imagine his father's face had he known that Arnold had become one of those freelance superheroes he used to dream about instead of concentrating on his homework, and that he hadn't even done anything to earn the trust people throughout the multiverse had in him. In fact, he had gotten trillions of them killed! What use was it all, the charade, the make-belief, tricking himself, tricking everyone, when underneath it all, he was still the same cowardly good-for-nothing? Some part of him, deep inside, told him that he had to stop doing, wanting what everyone expected of him and start doing what he wanted to do, what he did well, but that part was far too miniscule to be noticed.

His alter ego was still waiting, watching him carefully.

Rimmer closed his hand so tightly around the tablet that he expected the casing to crack and lied through his teeth – wasn't lying to himself what he had always done? "I would. In a heartbeat."

"Really?"

"Why do you think I was so eager to get the _Wildfire_ repaired? I couldn't stand Lister's company for longer than I have to."

Nano-Rimmer didn't look too convinced. "But you're dying."

"Doesn't mean I want to do it under Lister's nose, does it? He's seen me die once, on video, and I am not going to give him the live performance, thank you very much."

"I'll do it", his alter ego said quietly, "I'm going to become Ace."

"I know. For now, let's wait until the dust has settled and the _Wildfire _has been repaired."


	9. The Wildfire

**IX. The _Wildfire_**

Lister had given up on the Cat and Kryten, both of whom had politely refused to share his company after the recent revelations. Instead, he busied himself by getting as much of the _Wildfire_ on board _Red Dwarf_ as he could gather up. He was sure he had missed some screws and the odd little bits on the rocky surface of the moon, but he soon had the entire ship, as far as he could tell, in the cargo bay.

It looked like a pile of junk.

Lister had no idea whatsoever how to even begin fixing it, so he began by setting up the rear cabin. The cabin had survived largely intact, as far as the living area was concerned, but the exterior hull had struck a leak and the drivepods were hanging off. Lister extracted and disconnected the interior cabin and used a cargo crane to manoeuvre it into one corner of the bay, where it looked like a tiny and very ugly log cabin, before he climbed into the ruined cockpit and continued his work on the mainframe. With a charger cable from Holly, he was able to circumvent the power shortage and boot up the computer hardware, getting started on reconnecting and replacing the damaged circuits. He had no idea if he put her together the right way. Holly's occasional comments weren't much help, and he might just as well have been turning the AI into a calculator or a bomb.

Just as he was about to connect a monitor and give it a go, Rimmer found him – well, it was Ace, really, back in uniform and wig. He stepped over to look at Lister's pile of cables, and Lister felt suddenly incredibly nervous, as if Ace was still someone he had to impress, not only the very same Arnold J. Rimmer with whom he had shared a bunk ever since arriving on _Red Dwarf_. He couldn't even be entirely sure which Rimmer it was at first glance, but the way he maintained his distance and the electronic buzz of simulated warmth from his hard light body, only obvious when he was peering over Lister's shoulder, told him all he needed to know.

"Any success, Skipper?" he asked, completely Ace.

Lister stared for a moment, startled, then placed his screwdriver on the ground. "Rimmer, man, I'm sorry about the others. I'll get it into their heads eventually, I swear. But it's jus' me now, an' I know ye're exhausted. You don't have t' do this. Jus' be you."

"'fraid I don't know what you are talking about, Skipper," Ace said, rocking back onto his heels in a gesture that was only a faint echo of Rimmer's. "Anything I can help you with?"

_Now I've got ye_, Lister thought. "Ye know, ye bein' hard light and nearly indestructible an' all, I could really use someone t' clear up some of the debris under the front window. I did'na really wan' t' touch it because of the glass – it might come down." Lister fully expected Rimmer to protest, to declare that _he_ most certainly wouldn't go in there, then. Consequently, he was completely flummoxed when 'Ace' just nodded and climbed past him into the ruined pilot's chair. There, he wordlessly began to collect loose bits and pieces that weren't connected to what they should be anymore, tossing glass shards out of the shattered windscreen and passing the important looking bits back to Lister.

Lister was too stunned to think of a suitable reaction, so they ended up working silently side by side for a while, stillness only interrupted by the clattering of equipment, the soft _ti-ling_ of the glass shards and the _kablunk_ of Lister shifting larger pieces of circuitry around. _Ti-ling, ti-ling, ti-ling-ling, kablunk, ti-ling, kablunk, kablunk, ti-ling, kablunk, kablunk. KABLUNK. _

Lister had just finished closing up the casing of what he assumed was the computer's motherboard and main memory, which was now connected to a screen with only one crack and receiving power from Holly when he realised that the _ti-ling_s had stopped. He peered around the backrest of the pilot's chair in the confined space and caught Ace with one hand gently closed around the control column, the other pinching the bridge of his nose. The consoles were mostly clear, some cables hanging off here and there, the odd missing button, but no more debris.

"You okay?"

Ace jumped a bit at hearing Lister's voice so close, then visibly shook himself out of it, straightening. "Perfectly, Skipper. Just getting a bit sentimental."

"I was talkin' to Rimmer, actually," Lister said, annoyed. It was almost like talking to a man possessed – like there where two people sitting before him, not one. But there was only one, wasn't there? Rimmer had become Ace, and even if the others did not believe him, he was determined to prove it, wasn't he?

"Everything tickety-boo, Listy." It was incredibly strange hearing Rimmer's voice in this get-up, like someone dropping out of a role in the middle of the play. Even without Rimmer's usual expression, the cheerfulness was so blatantly faked that Lister felt he needed to call him out on it.

"Ye're not, though, are ye? Ye never are when ye say that."

Rimmer, as always, ignored him. "How is it going?" he asked, his Ace voice sliding back.

"I was gonna try boot her up. She not connected to any systems yet, but maybe she's a bigger help than Holly."

Ace slid out of the pilot chair and joined him in front of the screen, taking in the amateurish work Lister had done. "The old girl won't like that you've disconnected her from the database, but let's give it a go."

"I thought the main memory was in there."

"That's only personality and recent logs."

"Oh."

"Don't worry, Skipper. You did a great job. Just start her up."

Lister flicked the power switch, feeling incredibly strange. The screen came to life, then stabilised on the flickering image of a fairly young and attractive woman. She had stunning eyes, a tasteful short hairstyle with a simple, but effective accessory sitting just above her right ear and wore just a hint of delicate make-up. If she had been a fruit, she would have been a mango – exotic, delicious, juicy and refreshing, but nothing too adventurous.

"Voice recognition should be working," Holly commented from somewhere, then disappeared mumbling into the ether.

"Right." Lister nervously rubbed his hands on his trousers, trying to get the grease off – as if he were in the presence of a real woman he wanted to impress. "Give me your registration, please."

"_Wildfire_, Dimension Ship 001," the computer said, devoid of emotion. "Personality disk booting." Suddenly, a whole string of grotesque expressions flittered across her face, then she seemed to register Lister's presence. "Oh. It's you."

Lister grinned his loveliest grin. "Hiya. Do you mind jus' checking the connections are workin'?"

"All working."

"Thanks, uh-"

"Oh, she doesn't have a name," Rimmer butted in from behind Lister in his normal voice. "Though she doesn't mind Susan."

Lister looked at him over his shoulder, was put off by the wig and looked back to the screen. "Susan? That's what you've been callin' 'er?"

"Yes. What wrong with that?"

"Oh, nothin'."

"It's not like 'Holly' is a perfectly sensible name for a computer, is it?"

"All right, quiet down. 's just she doesn't seem like a Susan, is all."

"I'll have you know she can be quite caring. She's not the brainless supermodel she looks." Rimmer raised a placating hand towards the screen. "No offense!"

"Arnold," Susan said, simply, her eyes rolling skywards for a moment. Then, she gasped, and Rimmer soundlessly collapsed. He crashed right into Lister and send them both tumbling out of the cockpit that was no longer attached to the rear. As they impacted, Lister found himself suddenly overlapping with the hologram, Rimmer having reverted to soft light. Lister blinked through the curls of Ace's wig at the back of his head and tried to see the lightbee which he could feel somewhere on his stomach. Lister closed his hand around it – and Rimmer phased out of existence.

"What the smeg?" Lister scrambled to his feet, clutching the lightbee. He didn't bother with brushing himself down, but he wiped his hand and then the lightbee on his trousers to get the grease off. Then, he climbed back into the cockpit. "Susan, what happened?"

"I have re-established Ace's hyperlink. It must have come as a bit of a shock."

"What hyperlink?"

"There is a mental connection between any hologrammatic Ace and the _Wildfire_. Didn't he tell you?"

"No." Lister looked down at the lightbee. He had a feeling that there were a whole bunch of things Rimmer had never told him. He never even knew if the stuff he'd told him about his childhood had been true or whether he had made half of it up. It sometimes just seemed too absurd – the traction machine? Hopping on Sundays? The Space Scouts trying to eat him? Did Rimmer really expect him to believe all that? But, and that was why Lister always kept his mouth shut, what if it _was _all true? Rimmer could be incredibly sensitive, and while Lister enjoyed winding him up to no end, he never really wanted to actually hurt him.

He had regretted what had happened after that psi-moon, and while he had never really apologised, all three of them had tried to integrate Rimmer, who had been more than a little traumatised even though he never admitted it, more into their activities afterwards – anything to show him that they had never really meant anything they had said.

Lister had been _really_ sorry about that smeg with the mushrooms – he had even apologised then, because the things could really have harmed Rimmer physically. Still, he hardly was there to witness Rimmer's complete breakdown a day afterwards. He had been complete out of it after PD – for which Rimmer had never shown up – and more than a bit smegged off at him for that, and had passed out on his bunk, fully clothed. He had woken up to Rimmer shouting, and had promptly banged his head on the roof of his bunk, but his annoyance had disappeared when he found that Rimmer had collapsed in some kind of hysteric fit: Already in a hospital gown, his bunkmate had been kneeling on the floor, face hidden in his hands, rocking back and forth and sobbing. Lister had called the paramedics, and they had taken Rimmer away. Lister had been tired enough to pass out again on the table, waiting for him to get back. When Rimmer had, it had been early morning, and he had looked like death warmed up. The paramedic who wheeled him in clearly was glad to get rid of him. He had manoeuvred Rimmer, who could hardly stand on his own, not too gently onto his bunk and had left, with only a snappy 'Unfit for duty for a week. Leave him alone.' towards Lister. Lister had thought it incredibly insensitive of him to blame Lister (even though it had been his fault, and at least somebody had believed Rimmer for once), but he did as he was told. By his own definition, at least. He eventually was able to coax out of Rimmer that he had had his stomach pumped, again, and his whole blood exchanged, again, and had every psy-test run the medi-comp could get done, which eventually ended with him being declared drug-free but suffering from a complete mental and physical burn-out, which required a week of complete rest towards recovery. Rimmer didn't do rest well. He was the kind of person who always wished he were less stressed, but seemed to live on a steady level of anxiety because that was who he was. Seeing him so tired out was strange, particularly because he was too tired to even sulk or ignore Lister. He presumably spend the days hardly budging from his bunk while Lister was off at PD, and when Lister came back, exhausted, they would sometimes even manage some light conversation. That had been a first.

Lister wondered if Rimmer's lack of resentment towards the others' reaction was a sign that he wasn't well at all. He clearly wasn't perfect, but Lister had assumed that it was just the shock. But maybe the lightbee was more badly damaged than he claimed it was. Lister turned it over in his hand. The casing looked fine. A few chips and scrapes, a bit stained (now that it had been in Lister's palm), but intact. He looked back at the monitor. "What should I do?"

"Let him go and step back, I'll reboot his program."

"But I have disconnected you from most systems."

"The hologrammatic unit is installed on my motherboard."

"Really? Why's that?" Lister thought of the gigantic holo suite of _Red Dwarf_, and marvelled for a moment at the magnificence of the dimension ship.

"It was Arnie's idea." Somehow, her voice communicated that she meant this Arnold Rimmer, and none of his alter egos. "It allows his program to run even when there is little power or a fault in any other system. It's part of the _Wildfire_'s heart."

"That was Rimmer's idea?" Lister said, then replayed the words in his head and was suddenly glad that Rimmer was not around to hear them. He had to be the one who believed in the smeghead, hadn't he? Lister placed the lightbee on the ground and tried to give Rimmer a bit of space in the cramped cockpit. The lightbee came to life, hovered into the air and Rimmer flashed back into existence with surprising speed. Lister had no time to wrap his head around the fact that the _Wildfire _had rebooted him as Rimmer, not Ace, since the hologram's first breath was something between a gasp and a sob, and he tumbled down into the pilot chair, hanging on for dear life.

"Rimmer, man, are you all right?"

"Just fine," Rimmer gasped out, pressing his hand against his midsection where Lister knew the lightbee was hovering, even though he couldn't see it anymore.

"I don't think I believe ye."

"When did you happen to become so insightful, Listy?"

"No offense, Rimmer, but people don't usually look like that when they are perfectly fine."

Rimmer let go of the chair and dropped his hand into his lap, trying for casual, but his face remained pale and drawn. "I just didn't think the _Wildfire _could support me, that's all. It's a bit of a shock."

"She was saying about a hyperlink…"

Rimmer looked at the screen, and Susan looked back at him, but neither of them commented. Eventually, the hologram glanced back at Lister. "Be careful where you stick your greasy fingers from now on. And don't even think about messing with the motherboard."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Lister replied with a mock salute, though it was only mildly mocking.

Rimmer shot him a weakened glare before pushing himself to his feet and making his way out of the _Wildfire _and out of the cargo bay.


End file.
